


Fighting Fair

by xXx_BloodyRow_xXx (FishLordVehem)



Series: Saint Vampire [2]
Category: Saints Row, Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-06-03 08:16:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19460014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FishLordVehem/pseuds/xXx_BloodyRow_xXx
Summary: Playa gets the crud beat out of him.





	1. Canonization

**Author's Note:**

> My Boss' name is Viv and he doesn't want to be here.  
> Edit/Patch notes: Fixed grammar+repeated words and some unintentional shift changing. Thanks sweetheart <3

Viv sank to his knees. They wouldn't stop. They just wouldn't fucking stop.

"That's enough!"

Expelled, with no job, and a car that he soon wouldn't be able to afford the upkeep for, Viv cursed himself for being so naive---so careful with his attacks and careless in how he had defended himself. This stupid fucking gang was the only opportunity he had now, his only shot at survival if he didn't want to live in Stilwater's homeless shelter. The only price he had to pay to fit in was a contest of brutality, a melee that he had to win.

But he hadn't won, not even close.

His loss here---his sound beating---was to be expected, honestly. He'd been outnumbered, for one. Until recently, his fights had always been limited to one-on-one wrestling matches, confined to a box, and his coaches had always set him with a focus on performance rather than brutality. In the few matches attempted outside the ring, he'd been deposited into a world of wildfire tournaments---of quick punches delivered in dimly lit basements and close combat in dark corners of Stilwater he never knew existed. He always took pride in fighting "honorably", whatever the setting---sure he dealt low blows once in awhile, but he never outright cheated, never sought to fight with knives or do anymore damage than what was required to pin someone down or shove them out of the ring. But lying on the ground here, throat sore from being stepped on or kicked (or perhaps both) while he was down, he'd come to the conclusion that his coach's words on how to perform as a wrestler wasn't doing him a lick of good out here. That pride in personal honor, in sportsmanship, the thoughts of "at least I don't fight like _that,_ I'm better than these fuckers"\---it was all just holding him back. None of this was working.

And really, considering his chain of losses back at Stilwater College, he began to realize it had _never_ worked for him. Gasping, Viv determined he was battered enough that the concrete he lie on currently felt comfortable, like he could sleep here, and he wondered if he was really cut out for this shit. Maybe his coaches had just been bad at teaching, or maybe they'd taught him all the wrong things, the less important things. Or maybe Viv was a bad listener, maybe he'd just _missed_ the important stuff. Maybe they'd told him what he needed to know and he forgot, maybe the lessons didn't stick. Or maybe all the opponents he'd encountered so far were simply _better_ than him. Maybe he just didn't have a chance.

"C'mon, get to your feet. We all went through that."

Of course he didn't have a chance. Viv pushed himself onto his knees, wrapping his arms around himself protectively as he evaluated his injuries. He's not fighting like these people. The reason he _lost_ all the time inside and out of the ring is _because_ he clung to this absolutely useless sense of morality. The reason he never made any money in tournaments, the reason he was so bitter about losing all the time---he truly _couldn't_ win without giving up these bullshit ideals of sportsmanship _._ All of Viv's matches now were unregulated, lawless, but despite the many wounds he walked away with, he _always_ fought like a performer, obeying rules long discarded (or perhaps never even learned) by his opponents. 

It's shit is what it is, and it has to change. _Viv_ has to change.

The bruises covering Viv ache, but that's all they are: bruises. No one had cut him up, no one here was out to break bone. That meant he could still fight, he could try again. Sour and plotting, Viv takes Troy's hand and allows himself to be hauled up, grimacing as the leader of this gang, of the 3rd Street Saints, Julius, approaches.

Could he take that challenge again? Was a shitty epiphany all he needed to hit harder? Could he fight smart enough _now_ to succeed? As he tries to sort out his next move, someone nearby says "Blood in, blood out."

"The hell does that even mean...?" Viv mutters, and chokes, finding his throat is burning from the kick someone had delivered to it earlier. It's hard to breathe, actually. Doesn't matter, the man's words and tone were threatening enough that Viv's taken it as an invitation, as another challenge. His next move has presented itself, and he isn't going to back down. The only warning, the only indication of Viv's acceptance of the challenge his newfound opponent receives is a sharp glare before he strives to throw a sharper punch, catching the man in the stomach.

Adrenaline coursing once more, the surprise in the man's face already has Viv feeling victorious. He's finally freed himself from the shackles of rules, of regulations and delivered the ultimate low blow: the sucker punch. And then his opponent _smiles,_ the bleach-tipped man he'd attacked recovers almost instantly. "You just started somethin' you can't finish..."

Julius holds up a hand to indicate time out- - -but Viv's  _ready_ to fight now,  _truly_ ready, practically frothing at the mouth for  this fight . "You got spirit, son, I'll give ya that."  Viv practically bounces in place with newfound energy, and Julius shakes his head , giving up on stopping him and step ping back to give  him and his opponent room.

The gang members who'd already beaten the shit out of Viv are coming back to kick the second wind out of him, and, clinging to hope that if he challenges Troy or Bleached Tips, he might be able to have a one-on-one he can win, Viv strikes out again, this time attacking the man who'd saved him last night.

Bradshaw side-steps, looking to Julius for direction, muttering "You didn't want us involved..." With him looking to his leader, though, Viv manages to get a kick to his shin in, something he ordinarily wouldn't resort to, and Troy turns on him. "You think that's funny, huh?"

It is a little.  Viv raises his fists in front of him, readying himself like a boxer this time , wondering how Troy would fight compared to the others. He was obviously up there in the ranks of Saints, or at least, he talked a lot more to Julius than the other pricks here had, so far , but he always seemed kind of bookish back when Viv knew him. Granted, they were kids, then, but, still...

Viv wonders how pissed Troy would be about losing, if Troy even recognizes him now. Doesn't have time to wonder anything else, though, because the maneuver Bradshaw pulls has Viv's chin hitting the pavement with a knee in his back before any of the other Saints could even touch him.

This time Bleached Tips McCreep helps Viv as Bradshaw gets off him. "This kid ain't smart, but he's got guts."

And then he's shoved unceremoniously forward. Dizzy, Viv tries to figure out where the fuck Troy is, because dammit, that wasn't fair.

"Welcome to the 3rd Street Saints." Oh? A fistbump? From the leaderly dude? Confused, Viv inwardly applauds himself for apparently Doing The Right Thing in challenging Troy and the creep over there. Out of the corner of his eye, Viv sizes Bleached Tips up, trying to figure out if he's as much of a threat as Bradshaw or not. He looks like a kid, like he's ditched high school to be here. The confidence he exudes is a different sort from everyone else here, light-hearted, almost. That's it, then\--- he's just some dumbass kid. "So long as word gets out that the Saints is on the Row, I don't give a damn how you do it. You feel me?"

What? Oh. That Julius guy  had been  addressing the crew here \---but still rather dizzy, Viv's missed most of  the speech and only catches the end . Viv nods  along with the rest of the group , unsure of  just  what he's getting into.


	2. Friendly Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to upload as a second chapter earlier, not an extra part. Sorry about that.

Still winded from having the shit kicked out of him twice, Viv's more than a little leery when Troy calls for him later.

"Don't be like that. You're canonized now, you're in. It's over," he speaks softly, almost as though he's trying to comfort Viv. "Woulda been over a lot sooner if you hadn't taken a swing at me n' Gat, too, dumbass."

Viv doesn't say anything. For one thing, he isn't sure _what_ to say to Troy, he's still processing the fact that Troy is even here, that he's in a gang of all places. Taking in everything from the man’s short wavy hair to the dark purple polo over a bright purple T-shirt, the gun sticking awkwardly out of the holster at his waist, Viv wonders if this was really the same Troy Bradshaw he'd met in---that maybe this man just happens to have the same name and a similar appearance to the friend he had back then. But this Troy definitely has that same look in his face as the kid Viv knew, something he'd always pinned down as nothing more than "clever". Honest, too, and eager, sometimes. However, now Viv has other words to describe him: shifty and cautious. Considering the environment, Viv understands this totally. And considering Viv himself had attacked him rather suddenly less than thirty minutes ago, Troy has every reason to be on guard. Attempting an apologetic smile, Viv inwardly cringes. His mouth feels stretched far too wide, even askance---crooked and uncomfortable---and Troy now looks even more on guard, torn between retreating or kicking Viv’s ass again.

In school, everyone thought Bradshaw would end up being mayor or president or something---seeing him in some random streetgang now is more than just jarring---it's _disappointing_. As a child, Viv had always looked up to Troy and even did his best to follow in his footsteps in many cases. Seeing him here of all places is...well, it's bad enough Viv's _own_ dreams were totalled, but seeing someone he idolized in the same tough spot is painful. 

Seeing as Viv isn't going to respond (or take another swing) and that his creepy attempt at a smile had vanished, Troy shrugs and signals him to follow, heading out towards the street in front of the church. "It's time for you to buy a piece."

Swallowing hard (and regretting it instantly, as it's like choking down a coal), Viv jams a hand in his pocket. He doesn't have to check his wallet to know he hardly has any cash on him. Still, he follows his former friend, silently hoping wherever they're going to get a gun will have a heavy discount for first-time buyers, or at least some sort of bargain bin. He's about to crack a joke about the latter, actually, but stops before he gets a single syllable out. He'd bit his tongue hard earlier (back when Troy dropped his chin into the pavement) and now his tongue feels like a bloody, swollen lump in his mouth, like the whole tip of it is one massive blister. Not only that, but the indecent kick he'd taken to the neck when he was downed the first time---before he'd challenged Troy and his pal---was feeling worse and worse as the adrenaline fizzled out of him. It was like part of his throat was juggling increasing amounts of razors and glass, and the other part was suffering a rapidly spreading inferno.

Sorely aware of how stupid this is, Viv considers just...turning and walking away, not coming back. But he can’t think of a single job that will pay well enough for him to get the hell out of Stilwater. And going back to school isn’t an option. The funds he has are running low, he’s barely scraping by as it is, living off canned beans and bread---shit he can buy cheap and eat in his car. He stopped buying water for himself months ago, refilling old plastic bottles in bathroom sinks where, for the last week, he’s done his best to wash his clothes as well. Sure, he can work at Freckle Bitch’s or Apollo’s, he supposes, or try serving in the restaurants at the Marina, maybe pick up bartending or reapply at Semi Broken. But the idea of sitting behind a register for hours, having a shitty boss and shitty hours for a year or more until he can afford to leave---it makes him ill. His only other option then, if he walks away now, if he doesn’t want to stay homeless, is beg. Beg for the school to take him back. Beg for Elijah to give him work, or worse, pay for his airline tickets, beg for him to get him a place to live on the mainland. Thankfully, the walk to Friendly Fire is quick, and Viv’s current train of thought collides with the present. Troy indicates he should wait at the counter---it sounds like the clerk may be in the back of the store, and as much as Viv is worried about the cost and _use_ of a potential piece, he has time enough to (mostly) calm down and even idly wonders which came first: the church, the Saints, or the gun store? Did Julius pick the church as his gang's headquarters due to its proximity to the Friendly Fire, or did Friendly Fire see and seize the opportunity to open a store here after the Saints moved in?

Regardless, there _is_ a bargain bin that Viv’s noticed, but it isn't for full weapons---it's all parts he has no knowledge of, and he glances at Troy for guidance. Bradshaw isn't paying any attention to him though, he's admiring some menacing looking...big guns...of some nature that are, again, beyond Viv's knowledge. The entire store is full of guns of all shapes and all sizes, trapped behind glass cabinets and hanging on display over their heads. What little wall space that didn't house a weapon instead supports printed documents displaying pictures of guns and related jargon far beyond Viv's vocabulary, as well as graphic posters with kindly messages such as “Guns don’t kill people...” and “Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again,” and “I love my Krukov more than I like my wife!” and while none of this is holding his attention for more than the second it takes to glance at them, Viv is just ever so slightly interested in the parts in the bin. While the pair waits for the clerk to return to the counter he toys with them, studying the guns on the wall as well, trying to see how things attach and guess what each thing might be used for. Even with this quick attempt at analysis, Viv's knowledge of modern weaponry only consists of the informative lines he's seen on the wall-posters: "Guns are like cameras: point and shoot!"

Actually, that's about as informative as any of the posters get. When the cashier does return, it’s obvious that Viv is new to all of this and she takes full advantage, rattling off options at high-speed, describing in somewhat visceral detail all the different ways a gun could tear through something, and how each gun worked best in different scenarios and distances and so on until by the end of it Viv's mind is spinning, but he understands one thing: _Jesus fuckin' Christ, guns are expensive._

Still unable to speak, Viv doesn't raise the questions he feels should be asked, questions like "Don't I need some sort of permit or license to buy a gun?" and the related "Will I get arrested for buyin' this? Will the Saints bail me out if I _do_ get caught with a gun on me?" and also "Does Stilwater have _any_ laws regarding guns or are we just at the point where the laws don't matter anymore?" No, Viv just sort of gags on his attempt at speech, startling Troy while the clerk remains impassive and somewhat impatient for him to make a decision about the guns displayed on the counter. Viv points to the cheapest and shittiest option: a used Vice 9. It would be a full hundred dollars, including twenty-four rounds of ammo. Not that he's worried about using it. All he has to do is hang back and look intimidating, get enough cash from selling drugs or whatever they're going to have him do---until he can get a proper job and move on with his life. This is temporary.

They chat outside of the store, Viv's portions of the conversations consisting of little more than expressions and gestures, which seems to have been making Troy more and more uncomfortable, but doesn't stop him from firing off questions or rambling about what the Saints hope to accomplish. "So, what's your name?" Jumping slightly at the question (as he'd been tuning Troy out more and more the longer they walked), he came to the somewhat bittersweet revelation that Troy didn't recognize him. Viv supposes it has been a long time, after all. Hell, the last time he'd seen Troy they were grades apart---Viv had been in elementary school, and Troy was what? Middle school? High school? He could take advantage of that---reinvent himself, make a good impression here---"You look like shit, are you homeless?"

Viv doesn't deign to answer that with anything more than a glare.

"So, are you mute, or just an asshole?"

This time, Viv nods, raising a corner of his lip in what he hopes is a sarcastic sneer.

Rolling his eyes, Troy picks up the pace a bit, muttering "...Julius recruits the weirdest fuckin' people."

Viv tries to deliver a bitter retort, but all that comes out is that awful gagging sound and a bit of blood, but he wipes it quickly on the inside of his shirt and catches up to Troy. "Do the Saints offer medical or is my trip to the doctor going to be an out-of-pocket expense?" he signs.

Troy's surprised at the ASL and makes Viv repeat himself before shrugging. "You weren't hurt that bad."

"On the contrary," Viv signs with mock cheeriness. "My throat's utterly fucked!" Troy doesn't catch any of it though as the assholes in yellow across the street notice them, jeering at him and Viv, and it isn't until they raise their weapons that Viv realizes that isn't some ordinary clique, this isn’t just some group on a stroll---those're Vice Kings, and there's more of them than him and Troy, and this is where he's going to die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how it kept the indentation in this chapter, but I can tell you the HTML version of this document is full of span.


	3. Daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elijah fantasizes about things while the Playa learns to shoot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had something really clever I was going to put as the introductory chapter note, but then I noticed a glaring issue with the spacing of my document and had to fix it and by the time I was done it was 1:30 AM and I had no idea what words were anymore. It's 1:45 AM and I still don't know what words are anymore.
> 
> Oh, also, Elijah is barely human anymore and I will do my very best to remind you all that he is a weird monster man whenever I get the opportunity.

Elijah, as of this moment, is completely unaware that any of this is happening. He is completely unaware that Viv, a freshly canonized 3rd Street Saint, is frozen in place, exposed in the middle of the road he'd been crossing, presumably about to experience gunshot wounds for the first time in his life. He is unaware that Troy Bradshaw, another Saint, is yelling at Viv to move, to do anything, dammit, get out of there. Elijah doesn't know that Troy's yelling and the gunshots of the Vice Kings on the sidewalk finally reaches Viv, spurring him into jerky movement, and he has no idea that Viv pulls the trigger until his hands are numb. He doesn't know that Viv is trying vaguely to count bullets and failing because there's so much, _too_ much to keep track of all at once. He doesn't know that Viv's never held a gun before, but if he had been there to see, to witness this, Elijah would have been able to tell by the way Viv drops the magazine he'd haphazardly tried to jam into his Vice 9 (and the way he'd summarily dropped his gun as he panicked over the fallen mag) that Viv was so very new to his gun, he'd get more use out of throwing the damn thing than trying to fire at people. If Elijah were suddenly, by some awful magic, there to see what was going on, the situation would be _much_ different. For one thing, he had no idea Vivian was in a gang at all, and so would have to come to some swift conclusions based on the gunfight, and act accordingly. For another, if Elijah were suddenly there, right now, in the middle of this gunfight, he would be very on fire because today, Stilwater is experiencing the usual phenomenon that Elijah and many others of his kind have come to dislike, a phenomenon known as Daytime. It is a cloudy daytime, albeit not cloudy enough to protect extraordinarily flammable, supernaturally undead skin from combusting and killing him in mere seconds, leaving only ash where he once might have stood. So, right now, Elijah is not outside. He is inside, located within a building nowhere near Viv's battle, and he is quite bored. Doucelin is busy and even if he weren't working, the only attention Elijah could get from him would be via phone, as he left the island some time ago to return to business on the mainland.

Unlike Elijah, Doucelin's interests in Stilwater have all been strictly professional and practical. Doucelin’s thoughts were entirely oriented towards Qu Corporation's success---he'd deemed that any potential company growth that could happen in Stilwater would ultimately be microscopic---"No, we're more likely to _lose_ assets in the garbage heap of a city than gain anything at all, even with my care," Doucelin told him off-handedly as he hurried to the door the day he'd left. And then he'd paused, looking back at Elijah with a thoughtful, serious look. "But...if you're _that_ interested in staying here..."

And with that, Elijah was given Work. Work was not unusual. While he had no official title at Qu Corporation (being suspiciously immortal and on occasion, bestial, which was frowned upon by everyone who did not have these traits and even some that did), he was _technically_ a founder and was also Doucelin's right hand. They still bickered and giggled and snapped at each other a little sometimes when they remembered how their relationship _used_ to be, with Elijah on top at all times, the leader in all areas of their lives. "Bless us that time's have changed," Doucelin would say. And Elijah would grin, baring his fangs, and pounce much like a playful cat, bringing Doucelin to the floor, saying "Mmmf 'amvmt mmgd mmf m'c'" which was simply "They haven't changed that much," with his fangs pressed in Doucelin's neck.

Being Doucelin's right hand at Qu meant a lot of things. It meant having to drop everything at a moment's notice to carry-out Doucelin's will---which often times, when this will had reached Elijah, was at the pinnacle of importance and secrecy. The Work was so secret, most of the other employees and employers of Qu Corporation did not even know Elijah _existed_ , let alone worked for the CEO directly.

For the most part, Elijah could do the assigned Work easily enough. "Go here and retrieve this," was a pretty common task (Doucelin cracked the joke "fetch, boy," and "good dog, good fetch," so many times over the decades that the pair were both far bored of it, though on occasion when he wanted to be an arse he'd say these things, or a line like it, in the most drawling, mocking tone he could muster and Elijah would go berserk). Another common one, (though delivered with much more care and deliberation than these very generalized examples) would be "Go here and spy on this" or "Ask around about this thing" or "clean this up". However, this time, his Work was much more complex.

Ordinarily,Work would only involve one or two pieces: simple things that could go missing if Elijah decided he wanted them, and the Work generally left him plenty of wiggle room to go about and do whatever else he liked while he was carrying it out. This recent Work, however, was actually...confusing. It was...perhaps... _too much_ for one vampire to deal with.

Of course, Elijah wouldn’t admit to it being _Too Much._ Nor would he admit that he wasn't sure he understood it all, and he certainly wouldn’t call tell anyone he’d been so sheepish about his lack of understanding when Doucelin briefed him on his tasks that he ended up using his disciplines to create a false air of confidence. On a heart-wrenching level, Elijah knew that using his Ventrue Presence in this way was a form of lying, but he didn't want Doucelin to think he could _not_ do this Work. Especially considering the bouts of...ineptitude Elijah had displayed recently. If he failed at this, on top of all the other little jobs he’d completely bungled, Doucelin might figure out that well...Elijah simply wasn’t cut out for the modern world. Doucelin might realize Elijah was, in fact, completely and utterly, irredeemably terrible at everything. Doucelin might even be _disappointed_ again---and Elijah would rather stake himself and lie beneath a sunrise than hear “Well. I’m sure you’ll get better,” in that deflated tone he took to when things were at their worst. If he had to see Doucelin look at him with a high-dosage of concern and worry and _regret_ ever again, Elijah would probably fall down into torpor right there and never wake again. He absolutely had to do better this time. The new Work is a chance to prove himself _worthy_ again, and he was going to do it right...and figure out how to do it right without asking any questions, of anyone, ever.

Regarding the Work at present, Elijah had spent most of his morning, whilst confined to the sunless safety of his room, thinking about it, but the truth was, even with Doucelin’s briefing, he did not have enough information to adequately plan. He would have liked to go scout out the places and people Duke had mentioned, but the damned sunlight outside would burn him to a crisp if he so much as peeked outside the window of his room. Eventually, Elijah had grown frustrated and forced himself to _not_ think about anything at all and just _wait_ for nighttime to arrive...but soon found that without any thoughts in his head and no reason to move, he'd begun to fall asleep---or rather, because he's a vampire, the blood in him began to slow to a chill crawl and his body, already still, began to stiffen.

Disliking this feeling (or rather, the lack thereof) greatly and forcing himself to sit up now, Elijah allowed himself to think about his Work once more, but from the start this time, to be sure he didn't miss a piece somewhere.

First, there was the Goal---the desired effect of the Work: If Stilwater were ever to be useful at all, it needs to be controlled. To that end, to get a real hold on Stilwater, steps needed to be taken to ensure it wasn't overrun with gangs and trigger-happy pigs. _Police,_ a memory of Doucelin reprimanded him. _If we're going to_ use _them, we need to_ respect _them...at least a little bit._

Having had numerous problems with authority since his birth, Elijah did not respect pi--- _the police,_ and decided he'd work on those last (he'd been given no specific order in which to work from Doucelin, merely descriptions of what he'd be going up against). He supposed his most important task would be dealing with "Los Carnales"---The Brothers---a large gang which had been operating in Stilwater off-and-on enough that Doucelin's "briefing" had turned history class for a time. Despite the wealth of knowledge they had regarding this particular gang, there was some concern over it being an old organization, with ties to other old organizations. Old organizations tended to attract Kindred, after all, and other such immortal or long-lived types. Furthermore, the Carnales' primary color was red, accented mostly by black, gold, and white, and most members wore crosses and similar religious iconography, which Elijah knew from experience would give any member of the Camarilla a hard-on. The Cammies would feel they'd have no choice _but_ to meddle with these Brothers and possibly join their bright-red ranks... Not that there was any noticeable Camarilla presence to worry about in Stilwater. Nor was there any Anarch presence. Thus far, there wasn't much of a Kindred presence at all to speak of, really---a fact which made Elijah both comforted and anxious. No Kindred presence meant either he was safe to behave how he liked, without worrying about some Prince's laws or Sabbat coming to eat him...Or it could mean that the Kindred in this city were very, _very_ good at hiding---and had a _reason_ to hide.

Elijah’s lips curled in distaste. One thing he and Doucelin both despised was Not Having Enough Information. Decisions made with little or no information were reckless and dangerous and were how many people---Kindred, ghoul, and mortal alike---had died before them. This lack of knowledge regarding the city and its inhabitants is yet another reason why Doucelin had opted to leave, and yet, despite the dangers that came with Not Knowing About Things, Elijah had stayed.

What little information Doucelin did know, and passed onto Elijah, is that the only _suspected_ supernatural amongst the Carnales is a man named Victor Rodriguez. This Victor isn't leading the gang---just a part of it. He had no apparent Masquerade-breaches either---no flashy shapeshifting in the middle of town or blood-magicking someone into a fleshy paste---just rumors that he could shrug off bullets and deliver punches that could leave skulls concave. With that in mind, Victor could be just about anything---werewolf, Bastet, vampire, ghoul, mage---or he could be simply a very tough human! Regardless, Elijah figured the easiest method of getting rid of the Carnales would be to dominate people here and there (possibly starting with this Victor), get them to kill each other and all the other groups they're associated with, and then kill whatever pieces are left himself.

_"YOU! You did this!" Victor screams, the only one unaffected by Elijah's mass domination. Behind him, his men, Los Carnales, fired muskets and cannons at each other, driving their horses into one another and cutting each other apart in inspired bloodlust and hatred. "You're KINDRED."_

_The word was dripping with both surprise and malice, and perhaps more than a little disgust as well._

_"Indeed," Elijah preened, reaching for the blade on his back. "As I suspect, you are as well." Victor Rodriguez looked strong, handsome, even, and were they not enemies, Elijah would have gladly spent copious amounts of time getting to know him better and in intimate settings. Alas, Victor Rodriguez had to die._

_"I will avenge my brothers!" Victor announced, drawing his own swords. He dual-wielded longswords (an impressive feat, even for a vampire) and was fast, too, using Celerity to support his reflexes---but even so, Victor was not quick enough. Elijah's greatsword swept through him mightily and before Victor could recover, Eli pulled back and shoved the length of the blade straight through his opponent’s chest. Withdrawing the blade, he was delighted to find Victor's heart came away easily on the blade, and still beating on the end of the metal. Grinning, Elijah brought it down to his mouth an---_

Elijah quickly stopped fantasizing about his battle, reminding himself that diablerie was quite bad---very, very, very bad---and no one should ever do that no matter how sexy the person they're fighting is. "Doucelin would be very disappointed," he added out loud to himself. "Don't do that. Bad, very bad."

Next on his list were the Westside Rollerz, led by a wealthy lawyer. Doucelin had recommended humiliation in the courtroom as a means of taking him down---ruining the man's career first and letting the gang naturally fall apart without a strong leader behind it. Despite his created aura of confidence and very professional and agreeable nodding and murmurs of "Of course, genius plan, Doucelin", Elijah had never personally kept up with modern laws and regulations, and would have preferred if Duke had dealt with this man instead---Doucelin had a permanent hunger for knowledge after all, he kept up with the changing times much better than Elijah ever could, and his particular interest in the laws of the country gave him a special sort of edge in the corporate world and would certainly support him in a courtroom. Yes, it would have been much better if Doucelin had taken this William Sharp down himself in court, exposed him for corruption or whatever it was humans did to each other these days.

_"OBJECTION!"_ _Elijah belted out at full volume, slamming his hands on the table and standing up to point across the room at the boldy suited William Sharp, who recoiled in his seat in surprise._

Hastily, Elijah shut that daydream down---mostly because that was all he could think up. There was absolutely no way he could walk into the courtroom like this, armed only with the knowledge from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and what few episodes of Matlock he'd half-paid attention to. He'd just embarrass himself. Even if he mass-dominated the room, he'd still _know_ inside that he was an unimpressive idiot.

It also might have been nice, too, if Doucelin had also dealt with the Vice Kings before leaving Stilwater. The leader of the Kings, Benjamin King, oversaw a company called "Kingdom Come Records", which was quite popular here thanks to some such Stilwater celebrity producing content for them. Duke had lacked any suggestions for taking down King’s company or his gang. Members of the Vice Kings and the employees of Kingdom Come Records both were reportedly tightly knit, loyal, and proud---Doucelin had lacked enough time to get any more information about the business and its affiliated gang.

_I’ll just have to wing it,_ Elijah thought, already imagining just how he’d accomplish a company takeover.

_"Hello, I'm a representative of Qu Corporation," Elijah purred, adjusting his lapels in a subtly distracting manner. Beneath his suit jacket, all he was wearing was an extraordinarily expensive tie and some easy-to-remove pants. "I've got some proposals I'd like you to look over, Mr.King."_

_"You're too late, Elijah," the chair at the desk swiveled, revealing Doucelin in its place. "I run this place now._ I _bought out Kingdom Come Records while you were busy cavorting with Victor." Doucelin was, of course, naked._

_Elijah tried not to notice. "Ah...I'd wish we'd cavorted. Unfortunately, our relationship was short-lived, and kept at sword length."_

_"Ah," Doucelin said, leaning forward on the desk with smug interest. "A great length indeed, knowing your blade." His eyes were laser-focused on Elijah's crotch. "Did you bring your...sword?"_

_"I did," Elijah breathed seductively, dropping his pants in one swoop._

And dropped the fantasy in the same moment. _COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC,_ Elijah admonished himself, nearly tearing up his bedsheets as he threw himself beneath them and rolled in an embarrassment he could not suitably express in any manner except trying to burrow into the mattress face-first, shoveling pillows over his head. _DOUCELIN WENT BACK TO MILWAUKEE! WHY WOULD HE TELL ME TO STOP THE VICE KINGS IF HE WAS GOING TO DO IT HIMSELF! "GREAT LENGTH INDEED"?!?!?!? AUGH. WHY AM I LIKE THIS?_

Stewing, Elijah released one unearthly moan and went back to planning how he could _realistically_ stop the Vice Kings and the Westside Rollerz from trouble-making. Unfortunately, all he could come up with were terrifically violent methods of removing William Sharp or Benjamin King from leadership---and truthfully, he did not have enough information to plan even that much. He didn't know what Sharp or King or Victor looked like, really, he could only assemble them from the vague descriptions Doucelin had provided. To reach them, he'd have to dominate people until someone could take him to them.

**_"Take me to your leader,"_** _Elijah commanded. The Westside Roller bowed agreeably and led Elijah into a convenience store._

_"Okay, here's my manager."_

_"No!_ **_Take me to William Sharp!"_ **

**** _"Oh...I don't know where he lives??"_

**_"Take me to someone who does!"_ **

_"Someone who does what?"_

_Exhausted, Elijah grabbed the Roller by the lapels and fed on him until he was empty, then grabbed the manager too for good measure and did the same._

This last scenario was, unfortunately, more of an altered memory than a simply imagining. One of his last mistakes with another, different set of Work was using dominate judiciously and...recklessly. He’d run out of Vitae by the end of a conversation and bitten into a man like a hungry mortal would bite into an apple. Growling in frustration and chewing thoughtfully on the edge of a pillow, Elijah was about to give up entirely and call Doucelin when he realized he'd forgotten a gang: the 3rd Street Saints. They were a tiny little gang in purple, living out of a church and Doucelin mentioned before he left earlier that he half-expected one of the other gangs to take these Saints out any day now. And an idea snuck into Elijah's head---a proper one this time, not a fantasy--- _a real plan_ (vague as it was). Elijah could _urge_ things along: dominate and use the Carnales to take out the Saints, then use them to take out the Rollerz, and then the Vice Kings...and then if there were anything left at the end, he could dominate the police and use them to kill--- _arrest_ \---everyone else. Fantastic!

This was so much better than his earlier discarded plan (entitled "Slaughter Everyone Myself Before Doucelin Returns to Stilwater") because _this_ plan still carried out the part about killing without Elijah doing the killing directly _and_ it meant he didn't have to worry about navigating courtrooms or corporate towers _and_ on top of that, it meant he only had to dominate _one_ gang, rather than bits of all of them. It was a _cost-effective_ plan _. "Cost-effective"_ was a word Doucelin liked, and he would be ever so pleased to hear that these gangs would be defeated in a _cost-effective_ manner and would be over the moon to hear that this cost-effective manner did not involve Elijah prancing through the city in a delightful frenzy, leaving corpses in his bloody wake.

At the end of this Work, there would be no lectures about things like “Humanity” or “empathy”---everyone would be thrilled and patting Elijah on the back for being such a master manipulator and he would be Prince of Stilwater at the end and watch all the lovely little humans bow down to his will and he and Doucelin would have really good sex after.

Of course, his very vague and very cost-effective plan did not detail how he’d track the leaders of the Carnales or get rid of Sharp or King, but _whatever._ He could figure that out later.

Practically purring, exuberant with himself for solving this much of his puzzle, Elijah stretched happily in bed and allowed himself to bask in his own triumph, premature as it was. There were many, many ways this plan could go awry, he knew, but he also knew he was an astoundingly powerful, intellectual and not to mention superbly sexy vampire, experienced in discipline-usage, fierce combat, and romance, and he could undoubtedly deal with any problems that might arise with no hang-ups whatsoever, because he was just _that_ good.

At the moment, his only two problems are now: 1) the sun hovering outside his hotel room and 2) the boredom of having to _wait_ for the stupid sun to go away. If he were any other sort of creature, he would be tense with pent-up energy and excitement. But he was a vampire, and so it was easy to be patient. Not so easy not to be bored, however. He took time out for some mental exercise, going to his "happy place" of Doucelin's office at Qu and allowing himself to be treated to a well-deserved reward now that he'd completed his serious thinking. However, this wasn't satisfying, even when he added Vivian Melkor, the mothmen, a sexy werewolf, and Oscar Wilde into the fantasy. His imagination simply wasn't as good as the reality could be---and physically, imagining things happening to him and to others wasn't really as good as actually giving and receiving. And the great lengths his mind went to trying to make everything very sexy just made each scenario disgustingly embarrassing.

Trying not to be bored into torpor (or worse, an untimely Final Death) Elijah turned on the TV to a random channel, then took the trashcan from the bathroom and set it by the bed before retrieving his set of carving tools and a small block of wood, whittling away in an attempt to pass the time. This would be a bird, he thought, for Viv (Doucelin had more than enough of these), and he'd get to have it the next time he visits.

Viv was not thinking about visiting right now, nor was he contemplating Elijah’s woodworking skills---or anything about Elijah at all, really. He was currently trying to process everything that had just occurred. Had he been shot? Had he shot someone?

He was trying to find his feet, too. He felt they should be underneath him, where he was standing. They should be firmly on the pavement, they should be right over here. But it felt like his feet and his legs were still in the truck behind him, were still pressing on the accelerator. How had he ever entered the truck? Why had he driven it into a wall?

He remembered right then, but the memory made his stomach do bad things so he decided to stop remembering and instead looked for his gun and the magazine he'd dropped earlier, dropping to his knees while Troy looked over the wreck Viv was desperate to leave behind.

"What a mess," Troy fired three times, at the Vice Kings pinned between the smoking truck and the wall, and Viv froze again, hands hovering over the magazine he'd dropped a second time. "You okay over there?"

Viv swallowed, wincing at the pain in his throat and nodded. It took another two seconds before he could move properly again and shove the magazine into his front pocket, feeling it scrape against the keys to his car as he stood.

"You get shot?"

Viv doesn't know. He'd pinned three Vice Kings against the wall, using a truck a witness had abandoned when the gunfight broke out. "I did that," he wants to say, but his voice still doesn't work and all he can do is point, but Troy isn't looking his way.

"Fuck. This wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, yeah, I wanted to show you how to use that thing. But not like---" he gestures to the two bodies on the ground, shot, and then waves at the truck, at the three Viv can't look at. Technically, he hadn't killed them himself, he decides, remembering the three gunshots Troy had fired. Those Vice Kings were still alive after the truck had pinned them, and Troy had---Troy had put them down. And of course, the two bodies bleeding out on the sidewalk weren't Viv's work, either. No, he didn't know how to use a gun, didn't know how to aim. He'd just fired at random until the gun fell out of his hand. Troy killed everyone. Viv hadn't done anything. Viv was innocent. "They shouldn't have been here. We oughta get back in the church and tell Julius about this."

Viv nods again, and stumbles after Troy. If he was innocent, why was he scared?

If he was innocent, why did he regret?

The walk to the church isn't long enough for him to come to terms with anything that's happened. It’s not enough to come to terms with himself---if he even still is himself. He jumps out of his skin when some of the Saints clap him on the back and try to talk to him. They're all speaking English, but it might as well be gibberish as Viv tunes all of it out. He's not even half-listening as Julius sends people out to make sure their turf is still secure.

He felt like this, too, that night when he'd stared up the barrel of the Vice King's gun, waiting for the bullet to break between his eyes. Somehow the only thoughts running through his mind in the bizarrely long second it took for the man to pull the trigger were the physics of the bullet, the knowledge that at this range it would break through the front part of his skull and leave a solid mark around the entry point, go clean through his brain out the back of his head and possibly even embed itself into the pavement. The Vice King didn't need to be that close, he'd thought, but the man was obviously enjoying Viv's reaction, memorizing his expression and the way he lay, sprawled on his ass on the sidewalk where he'd been knocked down.

Viv found time in that crawling moment to be grateful, too. If this had all happened before he'd gotten expelled, before he'd lost his job---before things became hopeless---he would have died angry. But knowing he doesn't have shit but his car, and soon wouldn't have even that--? It made facing death a lot easier.

The sound of a gunshot that night had left Viv scared shitless, and at that very instant he'd changed his mind about facing death. Despite everything going wrong, he really didn't _want_ to die. He _really_ didn't want to die, even if he couldn't save himself from a shitty life, even if he never went back to school, never got a decent job, was never happy again--- _he really didn't want to die._ There would be so many opportunities to save himself in those situations, anyway---he'd always worked hard to make sure he'd be able to _live_ one day, to really enjoy life, eventually, and he could work hard again, if he only didn't die here.

To both his horror and elation, it wasn't the Vice King's gun that had fired that night. Troy Bradshaw had appeared in the nick of time and saved him, and shortly thereafter a man named Julius Little had invited him to the church, to get properly recruited into the 3rd Street Saints.

Honestly, after that gunshot, Viv hadn't been sure of much. Gunshots echoed through his head at an unbearable volume, as though one had somehow breached his skull and was now trapped and ricocheting about the inside of his head. The smell of blood and metal stuck in his nose even now, and facts concerning that night bounced around his brain as though they were merely a story told to him to study, to remember, to be quizzed on. These facts repeated almost as much as the bullets and the faceless Vice King loomed ever-present in his mind.

The facts were all here, in echoing in chronological order, the memories skipping like a broken record. That night, Troy had saved him, Julius recruited him. Troy gave him a cigarette to help him calm down, then another, and another, and Viv thinks he might have smoked the whole pack, and then somehow Viv ended up in the Go by himself, driving down a street that should have been familiar but wasn't, to a destination he knew a moment ago and now did not. His car tires squealed to the side of the road as he tried to get his bearings.

Viv isn't sure how long that took, or if he ever truly did regain composure. Not sure if he slept, either but the next thing he could remember, visually, was light spilling through the alley over his car, bathing the street's ramshackle brick buildings and their scraggly yards in orange light as the sun rose through a thin layer of haze. Distinctly, he remembers the suddenness of his turning the key in the ignition, then, the familiar action he'd done hundreds of times before feeling entirely new, his hands feeling as though they belonged to something else, the car feeling like it wasn't his anymore---and then he was driving towards the church, without a single goddamn thought in his head, just ricocheting bullets.

The canonization process had been a blessing for him, in some ways. The moment his knees hit the ground, he'd begun to think again. Being on his knees wasn't enough for the 3rd Street Saints, though. They'd kicked and kicked and kicked until Viv was in shock on his side on the ground, clutching his stomach in a vain attempt to shield himself. They just wouldn't stop, they just wouldn't fucking stop.

"Hey, are you in there?" Viv starts again at the hand waving in front of his face, then looks up from the gun he'd dropped _again_ to Troy, who'd apparently finished reporting in to Julius. "You stick around here long enough, this is gonna be your new normal."

Viv tried to understand that, as he bent to pick the sweat-slicked Vice 9, but the idea of bullets flying through the air and through his head being an everyday occurrence did not make sense.

"You don't gotta stick around. You can just go. No one's going to stop you. You don't gotta be here."

The Go is parked in a nearly empty lot a couple blocks away from the church. One look at it and anyone would know he's living out of it. Up until last night, that had been his normal, and nothing else. School, work, and proper shelter were simply memories of a reality he used to be a part of. What remained of his life filled a tiny little sedan that, any day now, could fall apart on him. 

"You really don't look like you're cut out for this sorta thing."

With all of that in mind, Viv didn't know what he wanted. Being here at the church wasn't better than being in the car, it was simply different. His worries no longer revolved around suffering and dying from cold or heat or malnutrition---he worried now if sticking with the Saints meant he'd get shot at again, if he could handle being shot at again. On top of that, the fact that it was all new made the violence seem more exciting---fun even in a twisted, terrifying sense, better than it was. He didn’t feel like himself anymore. He didn’t feel like the same person he was this morning, or last night, or the night before. He was changed. He was alien. He was scared.

But he did know he didn't like Troy in his face, trying to gently encourage him to leave. Viv stood up and scowled. Then very carefully signed that he needed to be taught how to use his gun properly (though he didn't know how to sign the word for gun and had to spell it out)).

Troy studied him for a second, looking for something in Viv's expression before giving up and sighing, almost... _defeated._ "Fine."

But Viv did wonder if the warning was because Troy knew, that maybe he remembered or recognized him finally. Was there still some overprotective-Bradshaw somewhere in there, wanting to encourage Viv to do better, to stand-up for himself, to ask for help when he needed it? Was Troy disappointed in him?

Viv discards the thought from his head instantly. It'd been too long, Troy wouldn't recognize him---and if he did, their forgotten friendship wouldn't matter here. This isn't the playground at recess, this is a fucking gang.

"First, we're getting some fuckin' food." Troy had turned his back on him, not seeing Viv's half-hearted signing of "How could you even think of eating after all that?"

"And have you ever been to Forgive and Forget? We'll stop there on the way back, then see about teaching you how to shoot and actually hit a target."

He talks as though it's easy to put aside the earlier bout with the Vice Kings, so Viv tries to do the same, tries to ignore the rounds bouncing between his ears and move on himself. He doesn’t have to keep doing this, he tells himself. He can quit anytime. He never has to come back. This is only temporary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Editor in Boyfriend ~~works absolutely insane hours so this chapter has only been thoroughly picked over by me. But I'm not very good at editing my own writing. If you notice any glaring issues, please PM me nicely so I can fix them. Much thank, and thank you for reading.~~ HAS EDITED THE CHAPTER. PRAISED IS HIS NAME. Thanks, sweetheart <3 Thanks everyone else for reading.
> 
> VAMPIRE GLOSSARY (if I'm missing a word that was used in his chapter please PM me so I can add it here):  
> Kindred- stuffy vampire word meaning "vampire"  
> Camarilla/Sabbat/Anarchs- different "secret" vampire societies that have different politics  
> Cammies- members of the Camarilla  
> Disciplines- vampire powers  
> Presence- you know that feeling when you equip a six-foot claymore or similar weapon and everyone looks at you like "OwO wow sexy badass on the loose :3"? Think that except instead of a claymore you have a superpower you can activate at will to influence people to feel that way about you, or influence them to feel a different way about you. In the referenced instance, Elijah uses it to project sweet, sexy confidence to cover up the fact that he's a very tall undead dumb-dumb. It's 1:56 AM, I still don't know what words are and nothing means anything, you might be better off looking this one up on the White Wolf Wiki or something idk.  
> Dominate- vampire hypnotism  
> Ventrue- the type of vampire Elijah is  
> Vitae- ~~vampire gamer fuel~~ It's blood. Blood makes the vampire powers work and if vampires run out of blood they get hungry/thirsty or might just go right into a vampire coma (torpor).  
> Torpor- vampire coma  
> Thank you for reading. For what it's worth, your attention is far OwO sexier than any claymore you could possibly equip, and I love you all. I'm going to bed now.


	4. Ready, Aim, Misfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playa meets Lin, Dex, and Johnny, and Elijah talks about hunting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally this was going to be a quick sort of montage-thing about Viv's first month in the Saints, with a focus on his interactions with Lin, Dex, Johnny, and Julius. And then I had twenty-five pages and had to break it up into two chapters and that's just the first two weeks.
> 
> Editor in Boyfriend put off sleep to edit all ten pages of this chapter tonight, please show your appreciation to him by saying aloud "Thank you Editor in Boyfriend" as you click the Kudos button.

Viv's idea of "temporary" had stretched over the course of a month. A lot happened in that month. On that first day, after they'd gotten some fuckin' food, Troy gave him a tour of the city. Viv had lived here practically his whole life and already knew most of the main roads, knew the flow of traffic and people (and he even knew some less-frequented corners of the city, the kind of places he would not, under most circumstances, admit to knowing), but Troy wanted him to know about places like Forgive and Forget, where for a fee, he could hide from the police and the gangs, and well, be forgotten for a bit. Troy also told Viv what corners and shops the cops frequented, and where he'd seen members of the other gangs prowling. Troy drove slow, he drove safe, but most of all, he drove alert. Hardly even glancing at Viv, his focus flitted from the road to the sidewalks to any blue, red, or yellow cars, and then back to the road again. Occasionally, a flash of purple would go by---another car, another person wearing violet---and he would relax a little, barely, as though just an ounce of weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

"You still have a chance of getting out of this, you know," he reminded Viv, the second time since they'd gotten back in the car after eating at Freckle Bitch's. "Nobody knows you. No one's after you. You can still quit now and go back to whatever the hell it is you were doing. You can still get out." After a moment, he added quietly, "Some of us can't do that anymore. We don't all have a choice in this."

Viv sank into his seat. The more he listened to Troy, with every new instance in which he saw how he behaved around town---flinching, on edge and hyper-vigilant, ready at any moment for another gunfight---the more he feared this life. He told himself that, after today, he'd toss the gun aside and go to a shelter, not put up with this shit anymore. And as soon as Elijah gets back from the mainland, he'll come clean about his homelessness, ask for help. The last thing Viv wanted was to get stuck in with the Saints, to be trapped here, wanted by the police, recognized across town as a criminal. And he didn't want the Carnales and the Rollerz and the Vice Kings to recognize him, either, to hunt him down, to kill him. He didn't want to be arrested, and he didn't want to be left for dead, brained on the sidewalk somewhere, forgotten.

But...on the other hand...he didn't have any money. And it would be a shame to toss aside the gun that had cost so much, especially after Troy spent that same afternoon teaching him how to use it. After the anxiety-ridden tour of Stilwater, members of Julius' gang met them at an empty, abandoned parking lot not far from the Friendly Fire---their makeshift range---with cans, crates, beer bottles, and cardboard all stacked and ready to be shot at. They interrupted Troy's teaching to tease him about babysitting again---apparently, he'd made it his job to teach the newbies in 3rd Street, Viv wasn't special---and to meet the new guy themselves.

Viv learned some names that day: Lin, Dex, and Johnny Gat. He'd seen them all at his canonization but now met them as Troy's friends, as Bradshaw tried to introduce them stiffly. Awkward and nervous , Troy behaved as though he were embarrassed to be seen with them, embarrassed to admit to knowing them, but Lin pushed him aside to introduce herself. She was broad-shouldered, muscular, and wore a deep violet tank and dark track pants that partially concealed a small tattoo of a dragon. Gold wrapped around her index fingers and danced beneath her ears, and a band of shimmering metal curled around her left arm. Her long, free-flowing hair was occasionally jostled by the breeze and in front of her eyes but it didn't seem to bother her one bit. Her stance exuded confidence, her face conveyed curiosity, and her entire being seared into Viv's mind as the epitome of everything anyone could possibly want to be, ever. Viv was so taken by her appearance that he barely heard a word from her beyond "I'm Lin."

Dex introduced himself next. He wore a purple visor (that would have been shading his gorgeous eyes were he not wearing it sideways on his head) and cocky grin that could summon angels down to sing. Over his shoulder was a thick denim jacket, too hot to wear in the surprisingly pleasant weather, and his purple shirt was identical to Troy's. He, too, wore jewelry—a simple gold chain tucked under the collar of his shirt and a ring on his middle finger. And, Viv noted, he wore exactly one earring, on his left ear. Viv couldn't remember if the left meant "totally gay" or not, but it didn't matter, because Viv could not form any words, verbally or otherwise---he was so taken by the appearance of this man and his cocky nature he barely heard a word from him beyond "You can call me Dex."

"And I'm the guy that kicked your ass this morning," Bleached Tips introduced himself simply. Viv scowled. Bleached Tips wore a white shirt with a lightweight purple jacket over it, and his necklaces and rings reflected harshly in the sun when he moved, as though each one were trying to personally pierce through Viv's shades. Viv fucking hated this smug motherfucker already. "The name's Johnny Gat."

There was a pause. Viv knew this was where he was supposed to spell out his own name, but the last thing he wanted was to spell out "Vivian" to these people. Would be safer to come up with some sort of code-name, anyway, keep his real identity a secret, keep it safe. On the spot, he tried to come up with something cool right then, but the only thing coming to mind was superhero names: Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Hal Jordan---none of it sounded tough enough, none of it sounded powerful, none of it was intimidating. And Troy used to read comics---he'd call Viv out immediately if he whipped out a name like that. Impatient, Lin made a face just as he was about to settle on spelling out "Constantine"---his hands faltered under her bewildered look.

"Don't you have a name?"

"He doesn't talk. Hasn't said two words since I picked him up this morning," Troy explained, his face softening as he looked at Viv. "Last night was pretty rough for 'im. Might be...you know---"

"You think he's traumatized?" Dex asked, looking at Viv now as though he were inspecting him for imperfections. "...Or just crazy?"

"With that haircut?" Bleached Tips— _ Johnny _ \---gestured. "He's crazy."

Irritated that they were speaking of and not to him (and that his hair had been criticized by  _ that guy with the shitty dye job of all people, Viv frowns and moves a bit away from the group, raising the gun to continue practicing his aim on the targets in front of him. _

"Yo, man, I taught you better than that!" Troy hurried over, alert s ever. "Hold it tight---no, not that fuckin' tight, Jesus, man, we've been over this---"

"Troy, what the hell are you wearing?" Dex interrupted. Troy frowned and looked over himself, holding his arms up and out to his sides slightly as he did his self-inspection.

"Wh--"

"What is this, some kind of uniform?" Dex pulled at his own shirt. "You're the fifth person today I've seen wearing this fucking shirt."

Grateful for the distraction, Viv stowed his gun and raised his sweatshirt, exposing today's purchase. Troy had talked about how everyone in the Saints wore purple, so while they were out earlier, Viv had bought the cheapest purple shirt he could find. Like the two before him, his shirt was a dark purple with a dark stripe over the chest, with two white lines accenting it.

"Shit, even the crazy guy has one. What the hell?"

At that moment, Viv's phone chirped at him, and he stepped back.

"Crazy guy has a phone?"

"What if he's not crazy, just mute?" Lin asked.

"You mean, like he  _ physically _ can't talk?" Troy asked.

"Last I checked, that's what mute means," Dex rolled his eyes, as Gat frowned and asked "If he's mute, the fuck does he need a phone for?"

Viv held the phone up to his ear as he left them behind, leaving the lot.

"Hello!" The cheerful voice on the line greeted him. "There was a change of plans the other night, and I'll be spending a considerable amount of time in Stilwater soon! Are you very busy with school? I---" Elijah paused, his words screeching to a halt in an uncomfortable pause. "I like spending time with you," he finally decided on, quietly. "You know. Hanging out. Chumly. Like chums. Your friendly countenance makes your company pleasant. Please say something, I'm very nervous.

"I mean, not  _ very  _ nervous," Elijah clarifies a second later, rambling. "Just a normal amount of not-nervous-at-all. Right, I'm completely calm. Why would I be nervous about us hanging out like gentlemen? Anyway, a-are you busy, Viv?"

Viv tried to grunt, but the sound wouldn't budge in his throat. He turned to the group, to Troy, who was too focused on his bickering with Lin and Dex and Gat to see the present dilemma. Pushing aside his plans to ask for help, Viv instead tapped against the bottom of the phone, where the microphone was: dah-dit dah-dah-dah. Morse code for "no". He was never busy when Elijah wanted him. Of course, that was because Elijah only wanted to hang out at night---man was practically nocturnal because of his skin's sensitivity to sun.

"Uh, I didn't catch that," Elijah said. "Do you not have good signal where you're at?"

Viv tried again. "I'll---"he managed, and choked, tasting blood on the back of his tongue, reminding him of his activities today. Elijah needed to stay the fuck away from this. Away from him. Out of Stilwater. Rich fuck like him would be targeted by these gangs running around. Viv would warn him, when they met. Tell him about the Saints, tell him it was unsafe.

"I don't know if you can hear me—I'll try calling again, later, I suppose." Elijah raised his voice again, and spoke slower, clearer. "Okay? I'll try calling again later."

The rest of the day flew by, as did the following ones, with Viv's mind fixated on seeing Elijah again. He couldn't wait to lock themselves in the car and turn the stereo up loud enough to rock the pavement and make the shitty old Go shudder with every beat. It was easy to picture Elijah listening attentively to the music and Viv's explanations, asking plentiful questions about everything from the meanings of weird lyrics to the different instruments used in each track. Or maybe they'd drive out to that spot in the middle of nowhere, the grassy clearing with a tree that was more overhanging branches than trunk, and they'd lie on top of the car and listen to gentler music and Elijah would point out constellations and they'd find new ones together. Viv would connect meaningless and distant dots and Elijah would fill the spaces and voids with stories, making up tales about their "discoveries" and what they meant. Or maybe they'd just go straight to the Heron and talk about everything from the safety of Elijah's bed.

Viv thought back to the first time Elijah had invited him up. At the time, he'd thought the invitation was for fucking, but when they'd gone up to the room, Elijah was nervous as hell. Viv had suspected he was still in the closet—Elijah had spoken often (and affectionately) of a "partner", only mentioning the man by name in private spaces---and kept very stiffly to himself in public, hardly making eye contact with Viv. But in the Go, his full focus would be on Viv, and he was no different in the Heron. Slight problem though: in the Heron, there was no console full of CD's between them. Despite Elijah's room being in a five-star hotel, it was small and tight (and his partner, "Duke", often left his shit on every flat surface, much to Elijah's irritation) so they'd both sit on the bed, inches apart probing to find the other's boundaries at a snail's pace, each unwilling to go too far. Viv couldn't even remember what they'd talked about then. Dreams, maybe? Goals? It mattered, but all he could think about was the energy in those inches between them, and the static in the places they were too afraid to reach for.

Elijah called him back thrice more over the course of two weeks. They were short, awkward calls—Viv still couldn't talk, and Elijah wasn't picking up on the codes he tried to tap out against and near the mic. Granted, both their phones were shitty flip-phones---Elijah's was some kind off-brand clunky-looking thing, and Viv's was meant to be disposable, and should have been discarded and replaced years ago. Morse might not be coming through properly. But Viv blanked on any other way to communicate. His phone wasn't made to send texts, and he doubted Elijah's odd device could receive them.

The last thing Elijah had said to him was, "I'm not sure why I can't hear you—if you're even speaking. Until I get some sort of confirmation that you're definitely on the other end of the line, I'm afraid I'm going to stop calling. This is for my and my partner's safety, you understand."

Viv understood perfectly. If he had called Elijah three times and talked to him and the only sound was odd tapping and background noise, he'd be weirded out and stop calling, too. Still, it didn't stop him from wanting to yell and bash his head into wall in frustration, and it didn't stop him from blowing more than half the money he'd scrounged up on alcohol.

Of course, after nearly two weeks of only being called upon to do beer and coffee runs for the Saints, Troy dialed him and told him to come to the church. Torn between going drunk and not going at all, Viv finally settled on the former. Lots of people drank at the church, his arriving four---er, no, five---Viv recounted the empty bottles again--- _ eight? nine???? _ \---beers into his night was nothing. He felt like shit though. He wanted to get someone, anyone, to confirm that he was here, to talk to Elijah for him. To give him the message "I'm here, Elijah! Viv's here, talk to me, please, I'm here!" but over the course of two weeks he'd become painfully aware of just how ingrained the gangs were in Stilwater's society. Everyone knew someone. Even the bartender who'd kicked him out earlier was chatting up some people that were clearly probably most likely maybe those Lost Carnageless assholes or whatever. They were all wearing red ties.  _ Ugly _ red ties. And the guy at Brown Baggers was wearing  _ blue  _ under his vest. Clearly an East---a North---a Westside Rollabouter.

Viv drove to the secluded parking lot a few blocks away from the church alright, he'd only run into (and over) the sidewalk three times—checked to make sure he was parked straight between the lines, confirmed the car was crooked as hell---and fell out of the driver's seat face first. His eyes were planted perfectly on the faded yellow---piss yellow lines. Definitely parked crooked.

Viv righted himself, much as he could, giving up on the car, and staggered out of the parking lot.

"Yo---playa, you can't go in like that," Troy stopped him, literally putting an arm out to halt him in front of the church's courtyard. It took Viv's feet a moment to recognize he'd been stopped, and he tried to stand up straight and stare down Troy. He was sick and tired of Bradshaw trying to tell him to do smart things, like not be in the Saints anymore, and to hold a gun properly, and to keep the receipts when he did beer runs and get people to pay him properly for the job. Just who does this fucker think he is anyway?

"I'm wearin' purple!" Viv signed indignantly. "I can go in!"

"Jesus—you're even slurring your words in ASL. You wait there, I'll call a cab."

Viv ducked around him instead, running into Lin.

"Watch it," she told him, shoving him back a pace. Viv managed to not fall on his ass, somehow, but it was a close call. "Troy, Julius is still waiting for you and he's starting to get pissed off."

"I know, I know. He can wait another minute. I gotta get playa here a cab."

Viv didn't want a cab. It would cost money. He didn't want to spend his own limited funds on a ride, or Troy's.

"I can walk home," Viv signed. Where would a taxi get him anyway? He didn't have anywhere to go.

Lin crossed her arms. Troy looked at Viv first with slight disbelief, and then with  _ pity. _ "You don't have to. Let me get call a cab."

"I'm heading back inside. I'll tell Julius you're dealing with the new guy."

"He doesn't need to know the details," Troy said. "Playa's still coming to terms with all this. Tell Jules he's sick or something, I dunno."

Lin shrugged, uncaring, and turned and left, leaving Playa—Viv, coming to terms with something else. He could trust Troy.

"Hey," he said. "If I ask you to do something stupid, will you keep it to yourself?"

Troy didn't answer---he looked scrutinizingly at Viv's hands, possibly because he hadn't understood what was signed or because he was trying to decide what his answer would be.

"I just need you to talk to someone for me. A phone call. Please."

Elijah was paranoid. Viv knew that from the stories, from the fear that sometimes slipped through in his tall tales. He didn't like people to know he existed, and he went to great lengths to protect the identities of people he associated with as well. So when Troy spoke from Viv's phone, from Viv's familiar number, of course there was icy suspicion in Elijah's answering voice.

"I'm callin' on behalf of..." Troy squinted at Viv's sign. "V-eev?"

_ VIV. _ "Is he in some sort of trouble? Put him on."

"He can't talk. He's mute," Troy snapped back. "Listen, I don't have time for this---"

**"I disagree,"** Elijah stated flatly.

"I guess it's fine," Troy shrugged, "But listen, Veev here says he wants to know if you're in Stilwater yet."

"How can I be sure it's him if he won't speak himself?"

Viv's brow furrowed in concentration. After a moment, he painstakingly spelled out, "Tell him I said to 'shoot my cupid out of the sky'." It was slow-going, he didn't want to fuck up and tell Troy to say the wrong thing.

Troy repeated the message accurately, though not without trying to decode the message himself.

"Oh!" Elijah said after a moment. "I get it. Tell him I'm in Stilwater and he can meet me at---"

"No," Troy interrupted, surprisingly harsh. "He's too out of it to drive. Come pick him up yourself." And then to Viv, directly, he said "You're too trashed to drive. Don't even think about it. You know what? Just give me your keys."

"I'll pick him up," Elijah promised. "Where is he?"

"DON'T TELL HIM ABOUT THE CHURCH," Viv signed quickly and largely, twice, before trying to snatch the phone from Troy's hand.

"You can pick him up at the Freckle Bitch's on Mission Beach," Troy replied, heading to his own car in the street. He didn't wait for Elijah to respond, simply hung up and tossed the flip phone back to Viv. "Get in."

"What are you doing?" Viv signed, confused, but obediently seating himself in the vehicle. "Don't you have to get back in the church?"

"I got time," Troy said. "I'll drop you off and pick up a Fun Bag, then head back."

"But L said the boss was pissed at you, that he's waiting on you."

"Yeah, but I've got time for this," Troy insisted. He seemed unsure though, hesitating before dropping into the seat. "I have time," he muttered, more to himself than to Viv.

Their night together at the Heron was stiflingly quiet. Elijah knew ASL, which was good for Viv, they could still communicate and do so well—but neither could think of anything to say. Currently, Viv is fucking exhausted, his head still fuzzy with drink.

Despite his earlier snap-decision to tell Elijah about the gangs, Viv had committed, somewhat selfishly, to not doing that until he had to leave the room. He wanted to stretch their time together on as long as possible.

But he hated the silence, and tried to think of something, anything to talk about in what very well could be their last night together.

"Can you teach me how to hunt?" he signed to Elijah. He'd taken a luxuriously hot shower and now languished (languished upright, not lying down) in a nice warm bed with air conditioning breezing through the room, and maybe Elijah would even order room service this time, or order pizza. Maybe. He didn't ever eat when they met up, so Viv always tried to make sure to eat by himself before they met up, but tonight he'd been so distracted by his own thoughts, he hadn't even thought about getting dinner for himself until he was just outside the Heron. Fuck, he'd even watched Troy order a meal at Freckle Bitch's, and ended up waiting there for Elijah by himself for a long time after Troy left.

Elijah blinked at him, taken off-guard. "To hunt?"

"Yeah," Viv confirmed, swallowing hard. His throat still fucking hurt, though the steam from the shower had eased things just a little.

Elijah frowned, thinking. "What will you be hunting? Will this be a social event or to feed yourself? And... _ where _ will you be hunting? So far as I know, there's no great place in Stilwater for game."

Viv flushed, shifting uncomfortably, rubbing his legs together to get at an itch, in the bed as he continued to sign. "I don't...know any of that. Just thought it might be useful---might be fun to learn."

Elijah thought of this for a minute, completely frozen in thought, like a statue, before looking back at Viv. "Some find it fun. It does  _ sound _ fun. But...have you ever killed something before?"

Viv thought to the three people he'd run over with the truck. And he thought about the lessons Troy had given him, readying to kill more, properly, with real weapons. He wouldn't answer. He  _ couldn't _ answer.

"Have you ever fished?" Viv shook his head, and Elijah hummed a thoughtful note before continuing with his questions. "Have you ever stepped on a lizard or a mouse?" No again. Elijah pressed on. "How do you feel when you kill a fly, or a mosquito, or a spider?"

Viv had never really thought of it before, and looked at Elijah in confusion, waiting for him to elaborate.

"Many people feel guilty over killing pests. Annoying as they are, flies and the like---insects, spiders, rats---all of them are living things. Like humans." Viv's stomach turned over the message Elijah was laying out for him, he could see where this was going. "Everyone chooses their own path, so much as they can. But in my time, I've seen our paths are often more shaped by our environments, our community, our needs, moreso than our will. The mosquito bites because it must feed, just as the fly circles in a search for a meal or a mate---or simply to sate it's own curiosity, as they have thoughts and personality as much as anything else. Do you think, if it could, the mosquito would choose to eat something else? If it knew the irritation and harm it brought when it bit, and had another option, do you think it would continue to draw blood for a meal, or would it seek the alternative?" Elijah's words often drifted when he tried to explain things, but he rigidly bounced back to his point. "I'm---what I'm trying to say, Vivian, is hunting isn't...I learned it, because when I was child, it was something that  _ everyone _ learned---even the  _ paysann--- _ er, the peasants---the serv---oh, er, the  _ help." _

__ "I get what you're saying, rich guy," Viv signed, trying to smile. It was somehow endearing when Elijah tried to pin words down for his employees without being disrespectful. Still, the morality Elijah had laid out for him made him uncomfortable, for he could see three faces pinned between a truck and the wall of a building, in agony, and wondered what they were like—if he could have avoided killing those Vice Kings somehow, if it would have been better for the world if he had died there instead, if he had let himself be shot.

"Hunting was a pasttime, it could be social. But it also kept me fed while I was camping and away from home as well. And it kept Doucelin fed when we were without any means." Elijah paused, reminiscing, before finding himself again. "Anyway, Viv, I'm not saying I won't teach you. If you want to learn to hunt, I'll...I'll find some time and place to teach you. Unless...is this urgent? Have you a means to feed yourself until I...until I sort things out?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Viv signed. "I..." And now he struggled to find the words. "I mostly just want to learn to shoot."

_ "Oh!" _ Elijah's face lit in recognition. "Oh!  _ That _ kind of hunting. I don't know that I'd be a good teacher for that. It's been a long time since I picked up a bow."

Viv blanked. Bow-hunting wasn't  _ exactly  _ what he had in mind.

"I'm very embarrassed," Elijah said chipperly. He didn't look flushed at all, though he did break his stare away from Viv and back to the quiet TV in front of the bed for a moment. "I completely misunderstood what you wanted at first. Still, my point about the whole 'everything is alive, no matter how small or annoying' still stands, even in regards to shooting, but if you want to just  _ learn to shoot _ I can definitely get that together."

Something seemed to be troubling Elijah though, and he looked to Viv again. "Though...I'm beginning to think...maybe you weren't what I thought you were."

Viv panicked. "I'm totally gay!" He signed quickly. "I mean— _ not gay, _ but I like men!  _ And  _ women! I like  _ you!" _

__ Elijah reeled back in shock, one hand resting against his collarbone and the other gripping the bed tightly. "I-I know _ that. _ That's not what I meant."

Viv's eyes widened with realization. "Oh my god,  _ you're vegan."  _ He never eats with Viv! Never! Always turns everything down. "I'm so fucking sorry, E. I messed up. Forget the hunting thing---"

"No!" Elijah snapped—genuinely scaring Viv in that moment, he nearly fell backwards off the bed---then calmed a second later. "I mean. No. That's not it. I'm sorry. Please let me have some time to get my thoughts together. Talking about this...explicitly...it makes me very nervous."

Viv didn't know what "this" was, but he felt concerned for Elijah, and for the relationship he had with him. He scooched closer on the bed, about to grab the hand Elijah had removed from near his neck, but hesitated and ultimately did not reach for him. Viv looked at the TV, then at his own hands as he tried to think of what to say to fill the silence that kept swallowing them both up tonight.

"I just...there's something I have to tell you. About my...about why I can't go out in the sun, and-and...and other things. And I'm scared, Viv. I'm scared to tell you."

"It's okay," Viv signed slowly, looking at Elijah full-on this time, shuffling forward again. He could appreciate that Elijah was trying to communicate this—whatever _this_ was---with him, even though it was difficult as hell. "It's okay if your sick. Or whatever it is. I'll...I'll love you all the same."

Eyes wide, Elijah's face was frozen in distress. Was that still too much? Had Viv finally crossed a line?

"Sorry," Viv signed, flushing. Inwardly, he berated himself over the word choice. Never love. Never ever, ever, talk to anyone about love. Not in a friendship-way, or a romantic-way, or a sexual-way. Never, ever. It's wrong, it's a terrible word, it ruins everything.

"I'm so  _ scared _ , Vivian," Elijah whined, barely audible. "I can't do this. Not tonight. I need more time. I need to think."

"Do---" Viv tried not to look as downhearted as he felt. "Do you want me to leave?"

Hesitantly, and as though he were dropping a great weight, Elijah nodded. "Yes. I just...I just need a little time."

"I get it," Viv signed, smiling through the heartbreak. "I get it. I'll see you around, Elijah."

"Yes. I'll call you," Elijah said.

"Good," Viv signed. His hands seemed to stutter on it. "Goodnight."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Scene start. The setting is the church, closed up and lit entirely by candles and lamps of all shapes and sizes. Julius Little stands in front of the podium, pacing occasionally before nearly the whole of the 3rd Street Saints, hyping them up to conquer another hood, in the manner that he always does: in speeches and pontification about how they're going to deal with these motherfuckers.
> 
> Suddenly, the church doors open. They are loud, thrust open carelessly, and squeak harshly, cutting Julius off mid-sentence. Julius and the entire gang turn to see who has intruded.
> 
> The lights by the door are bright, exposing the man instantly: it is Troy Bradshaw, clad all in purple, and in one hand is a small burger, half-unwrapped, half-eaten. In his other hand is the rest of his Fun Bag, presumably full of fries. His face looks like this: O-O  
> It is an expression of realization: he did not have time to drop the playa off at Freckle Bitch's. He did not have time to order himself a meal. He did not have time to eat some of said meal in the car before driving back to the church.
> 
> Julius' face looks like this >:(
> 
> End scene


	5. Beautiful Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viv and Elijah talk in the Heron. No canon characters in this chapter, see chapter 6 for Viv's return to the church.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, I love you.  
> Special thanks to Editor-In-Boyfriend for helping me fix up this chapter and the next one, and for encouraging me :3

But wait---he hadn't said shit about the gangs! Jamming his fingers into the elevator doors just as they were about to close him in, Viv shoved through the opening, tripping over himself the few steps it took to get back to Elijah's room. He rapped the wood before he even comprehended what he was doing, before the fact that he'd been kicked out had really sunk in.

Looking absolutely miserable, with mussed hair all on end, Elijah only partially opened the door, keeping the entrance blocked with his body. "I thought we just...finished this. Or did you forget something?"

"We didn't finish  _ shit!" _ Viv signed emphatically.

"I'm not ready," Elijah muttered in response, lowering his head and leaning it against the door, about to pull back and lock himself in.

Nodding in with what he hoped was a compassionate expression (and what he hoped was not a stupid one) Viv shoved his foot into the doorway, just to keep Elijah from closing up long enough to get a message out: "I didn't come back to talk about any of that, anyway. I want you to know there's a bunch of gangs running around the city. Might be best if you go back to the mainland." This was it. This was the part where Viv should _also_ come clean about his homelessness and his own involvement in Stilwater's gang activity and ask for help getting out of this shit. But his hands went to his pockets and remained there, silent and still.

"I...I can't go back. I have to...do my part to make sure Stilwater is a better place. But, Vivian, are you---"

"I'm alright," he lied, and internally, he cursed himself. "But that's the dumbest fucking thing I've heard all day. You can't make Stilwater better, Elijah. The island is literally made of garbage! The city just....sits on top of it! And the people here are garbage, too. You can't fix trash," Viv signed firmly. "You just gotta throw it all out."

Insulted, Elijah retorted, "Not everyone here is garbage." He was very stern about it, severe to the point that for a minute, Viv believed him, and for a nanosecond, he may have even believed in himself. Picking up his head just a little, Elijah continued, "Besides, one man's trash is another's meat---I mean,  _ treasure _ . Got my metaphors mixed."

"My meat aside and your meta aside," Viv signed, causing Elijah to slip and close the door on himself a little. "I don't give a shit about what you want to do with Stilwater, I want you to be safe."

"I will be alright, Viv, I can handle myself," Elijah said, proudly, stiffly recovering and opening the door a little wider. "D-do you know anything about the gangs? You should  **t---”** cutting himself off with a ghastly noise that looked to be a gasp but sounded more like a car choking, Elijah froze, stock still, then crossed himself and regained composure. Unsure of  _ why _ Elijah had gasped right then, Viv looked round to make sure they were still alone (they were, the hallway was empty aside from them) and then gave Elijah a curious look. Elijah didn’t explain it though, and simply continued on: “Tell me everything. That you know. Or you've heard. If you want to. If you're comfortable. So I can keep myself away from them. And be safe."

Careful to think before he spoke, there was some pause as Viv stammered and stalled as he tried to piece together what he wanted to say. Originally, he'd planned on telling everything: a big long, desperate speech explaining just how awful this year had been for him, how fucking awful his life had been, how he needed help. But right now, the last thing Viv wanted was to make Elijah feel like he had an obligation to look out for him. And the _other_ last thing Viv wanted to do was give _too much_ information. He didn't want Elijah knowing (though deep down he knew he should follow through on his earlier plan and should confess) that he'd been recruited to--- _had willingly joined---_ a gang. "There's four of 'em that I know. They wear red, or yellow, or blue, or...or purple. They're all over the city, too, every gang owns a street somewhere."

"Even the college?" Elijah pressed. "And our Marina?"

"I dunno." Between Dex, Troy, Julius, and Lin filling his head with information, Viv had genuinely lost track of who controlled what neighborhoods and what places were safe and what was dangerous. "Probably. I'd feel better if you got out of here, though. I don't want you to get hurt."

"Well," Elijah leaned entirely against the doorframe now. "Now I'm worried about  _ you." _

  
  


He had been aware of these color-coded gangs, but hoped Viv might have some more information from a mortal perspective. But of course, Viv was a hard-working student at Stilwater College, he wouldn't be involved in any of this street warfare---especially as it had occurred to Elijah early on that Viv might be in some danger if the campus was left unguarded. One of the first things Elijah had done---step number one in his "Making Stilwater a Better Place by Eliminating Threats" plan---was run around like a wild thing around the college, using presence and domination to scare and otherwise deter any goons away from Stilwater's place of higher learning. He'd done the same around the Heron as well, though keeping Vivian's school safe was the priority, so Elijah had not yet cleared out the entire Marina district of all unsavory fellows.

At Elijah's expression of worry, Viv seemed to waver, almost as though he were going to fall to pieces, and he even stepped forward, as though he expected Elijah to catch him. At that, Elijah had opened the door fully again, and was about to reach for Viv and pull him back inside, but ultimately hesitated, afraid to show _too much_ affection, afraid to cross any invisible boundaries, and instead stepped aside, giving silent allowance for Viv to enter himself.

Viv did not, however, his jaw set and he raised his hands to sign—then faltered---tried again and even opened his mouth to speak---then closed his mouth and raised only one hand to his face, shoving it unceremoniously under his sunglasses to rub at one of his eyes.

Something about Viv's behavior clicked then---it had clicked a little before, Viv's sudden interest in hunting, solidified when he specified shooting---but Elijah had shoved aside his initial suspicions. It was natural for many species to take interest in violence---after all, humans and vampire alike were showered with media romanticizing "action", displaying that fighting and killing were things to be glorified and respected. But now Elijah could see true  _ worry  _ in him, could  _ smell _ the fear on him. Someone had threatened his Vivian.

Trying to keep his fangs retracted and the growl out of his voice, Elijah spoke again, forcing his voice to be soft, to be gentle, to be quiet. "It will take some time, but..." he reminded himself that displaying anger in front of Viv would do more harm than good---Viv would get frightened (as he'd probably never seen a furious monster before). Additionally important: Viv wasn't a target for this anger, and didn’t  _ need _ to see it. Elijah set aside his fury for later, something to be turned on whoever had menaced Vivian. For now, he could offer Viv some other measure of safety: "...I'd like to put some of our—mine and my partner's---resources into protecting you. While the gangs are about.”

When Viv’s safety could be insured, Elijah would absolutely slaughter everyone wearing primary colors (and purple) as fast vampirically possible. Until tonight, Viv  _ never _ expressed  _ any  _ interest in violence---aside from his wrestling. He liked _ music _ and _ learning _ and _ cars _ and _ magazines _ . His fears should revolve around the functionality of his vehicle, his student loans, and the status of his favorite celebrities and brands. His concerns should be about whether or not Aisha is going to continue doing concerts in Stilwater and how to get tickets to such an event. He should be worried about things like his schedule, and what foods he wants to eat, and other little _ normal  _ things like that. He shouldn't be concerned with weaponry _ at all.  _ It was obvious now that Vivian felt unsafe in his own city---that Vivian was _ scared--- _ and Elijah could rectify that by focusing on ripping apart the threats rampaging across Stilwater---and providing Viv with shelter.

Viv tried to form words again, and it took him a full minute to successfully spell out what he was trying to say. "I can't have...bodyguards or whatever following me around," he finally managed sheepishly.

"No?" Elijah scrapped the idea. He didn't particularly care for a retinue either, honestly. "Could you at least...stay with me? Not here, obviously, not with Doucelin's work all about the room, but...I can talk to Duke and maybe we can set something else up."

Still flushed---though this wasn't from drink---Viv jammed his hands in his pockets once again, opened his mouth to speak, then remembered he couldn't suddenly and jerked his hands back out, signing clumsily, "Are you asking me to move in with you?"

"Y-you don't have to. And it could be temporary, if you want. And it would take time to set up, as I said. I could...have someone secure an apartment or a house just for you, I---"

"If we're going to live together, I need to know something, E."

This was it. This was where Viv would call him out, would point out that he never left the Heron during the day, that he wore long out-of-style clothes and his canines were particularly sharp, that the toothbrush by the sink was stained pink with blood and that sometimes his eyes seemed to glow red in the dark or looked glassy and lifeless during the day. Viv would point out that he'd never seen Elijah eat and sometimes he didn't blink or breathe and was often so perfectly still he could pass as dead. He'd realize the reason Elijah wasn't up-to-date on pop culture and music and cars and the like was because he knew all pop culture and music and cars of the past, but not the present, and the reason he was so insistent about the ancient stories he told was because he  _ lived  _ them. Viv would accuse him of being a vampire.

"I feel like we're in a weird space. If we could just---I want to know if I am---" fingers stuttering again as he caught and tried to correct himself, Viv took a breath and signed, very deliberately: "If I  _ could be _ , officially, in explicit terms: your boyfriend." Their eyes were locked (Viv’s occluded by the sunglasses he always wore), and Viv seemed to be both searching and careful, like a cat being put in a new environment for the first time. If Elijah moved to suddenly, answered too loudly, Viv might very well bolt and never come back.

Elijah wasn't human. Shock did not register on his features unless he wanted it to register. He was not prone to fainting at surprises, nor did he feel weak or feverish or dizzy. But Viv had been very forthright, and Elijah had been quite stunned at that, and he found himself suddenly supporting himself with more Vitae, supernaturally fortifying himself on instinct, as though he were trying to prevent himself from being staked or stabbed rather than having a simple conversation in the doorway to his room.

"It's okay if you say 'no'," Viv reassured him, gentleness easing some of the worry that had creased his skin. "I just want to know how to move with you. I keep getting worried that I'm pushing you, or scaring you off, and I don't...I don't want that, you understand? I want us to be comfortable together. And if that means just being friends...or more than friends...I just need to know. Are you okay?"

Elijah's fangs had extended unintentionally, and he covered his mouth with his hands---this was all instinct he didn't understand. It was nigh impossible to tell where the Beast in him ended and he began most of the time, and this instance was no exception. Was the Beast afraid? Reacting with fight or flight? He didn't feel as though he were about to Frenzy, and while he did want to sink his fangs into Viv's neck, that desire was no stronger or weaker than it usually was. Perhaps this was somehow all himself, his body and mind reacting to unrecognizable emotions he'd thought he'd left abandoned long ago?

"Sorry, sorry," Repeated Viv, sheepish, looking as though he wanted to fall right down and through the floor and disappear forever. "I'm making you uncomfortable, I can tell. Forget I asked, let's just be friends, if that's okay."

_ "No!" _ Elijah whimpered.

Viv's eyebrows shot high over his sunglasses and he took a step back.

Realizing he needed to elaborate, and quickly, Elijah hissed,  _ "No, I do not want to  _ 'just be friends'." His voice had sunk to sit just above a whisper, occasionally rising to a squeak. "I want...we can be...you know. Boyfriends."

"Really?" Viv  _ beamed, _ the left corner of his lip twitching in the manner that it did when he was ecstatic, and Elijah gave into the desire he'd squashed earlier and reached for Viv—albeit hesitantly---and Viv stepped forward, awkwardly raising his own hands, unsure of what Elijah wanted of him---and Elijah yanked him into the room, closed the door, spun Viv onto the bed and sat right next to him, staring at him wide-eyed. "What now?" Viv signed, having to move his hands between their faces to bring Elijah's attention to them.

"I don't mean to silence you," Elijah said, voice still ear-achingly quiet, soft. "But if we're...can I hold your hands?"

Viv grinned stupidly wide again and his the corner of his lip twitched with the movement. "I've been wanting to hold yours for months!" he admitted, before then admitting his fingers into Elijah's warm palms.

Turning them over and studying him, pulling Viv closer as he moved up to his wrists, his forearm, his elbow---Elijah wanted to go further, but this was  _ new, _ and he didn't want to press  _ too _ far.

Viv pulled his hands away, and Elijah sat back quickly, unsure of himself. "You can keep going. You don't have to stop there. You can go as far as you want. I'll pull away if I don't like it." Shuffling forward, Viv closed the space between them again.

"I—I should say the same. I'd  _ like _ to say the same," Elijah corrected himself, back to holding Viv's hands. "But I can't because I'm worried about my...about my---"

"Illness," Viv mouthed somberly, unable to put any sound behind it.

"...Yes," Elijah deflated. "I can't...I shouldn't—I won't take this very far, until I can tell you. Properly."

Viv nodded, understanding, though it was clear from his concerned and curious expression (that contained also a hint of consternation) that he did not.

"I'll tell you before we move in together," Elijah promised.

Reluctantly, Viv pulled his hands free again. "Just tell me when you're ready. Whenever that is. I'll wait for you. But until then..." Viv interlocked their fingers again, and maintained his adorable, twitchy smile, and Elijah felt something.

It wasn't as though he never felt things. He felt fear. He felt love. He felt the urge to keep moving, to keep doing things---that wasn't  _ all _ instinct. It couldn't _ all _ be instinct. It just couldn't be. Memory, perhaps. Maybe it was his consciousness clinging to things that used to be there, grasping memories tightly, too tightly, making him feel things that he shouldn't anymore. But then again, he wasn't afraid of fire before he was Embraced, and after, he was, greatly terrified of it. The idea that vampires were completely and utterly without emotion was a messy thing to untangle. No one could deny that the Embrace---the turning, the creation of a vampire--- _ felt _ like something. It stirred something in both parties. And Kisses, too---drinking blood, exchanging it, drinking it---it all  _ felt _ good (unless, the blood was rank, or cold, or otherwise unpleasant---then it  _ felt  _ bad). And as much as they may deny it, Kindred did still feel attraction and motivation for things---if they didn't, the Red List wouldn't exist, and there wouldn't be half so many stories of old vampires perpetually hunting down young virgin mortals. The feelings might not be exactly the same as what humans felt, but...to deny these emotions existed was to look upon a vast, bottomless lake and declare it not there at all. It may be the metaphorical lake is alien compared to the average, but to say it isn't a lake at all---or outright doesn't exist---

"You look like you're having a mental breakdown," Noted Viv, with some amusement, albeit  _ worried _ amusement. "What do you need right now, to feel comfortable?"

"Years of Kindred-related propaganda and a multitude of homophobia-fueled hate crimes against me erased from my memory." Viv didn't seem to know what to say, but kept looking at Elijah with such kindness it made him want to bite his neck. Not in a violent manner, mind you, but Viv was very kind and Elijah very much wanted that kindness in himself. And he realized, a moment later, that he'd said something he shouldn't have. "Kindred". If Viv really was completely mortal, if he lived a life away from...well, unlively communities---he wouldn't know what the word meant. Still, Elijah spoke in defense of himself, quickly: "I'm not a monster, Vivian. I mean, I am. I'm trying not to be. I want to be more like you, I think. Less angry, more hu--- _ hopeful _ and more...appreciative of change. I want to be kind and gentle to the world. I think that's a good thing to be."

  
  


In his car, Viv was having a mental breakdown of his own.

__ _ "I want to be more like you, I think,"  _ Elijah had said.  _ "I want to be kind and gentle to the world." _

__ _ "I want to be more like you...Kind and gentle..." _

In his mind, he could clearly see the three bodies he'd locked between a truck and a wall, screaming in fury and agony until Troy shot them, one by one.

"I did that," Viv wants to say, to point it out, to show the world. "I did that! That's my fucking fault, I did that! I'm not kind! I'm not gentle! I'm not who Elijah thinks I am! I'm  _ lying _ to the person I love most! He should  _ hate  _ me!"

He can't yell out, though. He can't scream, he can't point it out to anyone without getting fucking locked up himself. All he could do was hold it in until he got to his secluded patch of green at the base of Mt. Claflin and pummel the steering wheel when he got there. His repeated honking---although comforting in the way that he was doing something and making noise---did not convey the message that had taken root in his soul that night. It did not make him confess to Elijah, nor anyone else that might have been able to assist him, to rescue him, to protect him---and it did not undo the harm he'd caused to those three dead Vice Kings who kept fucking  _ staring  _ at him from their narrow space, between the borrowed, bloody, smoking truck and the wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate version of one paragraph:  
> "I will be alright, Viv, I can handle myself," Elijah said, proudly, stiffly recovering and opening the door a little wider. "D-do you know anything about the gangs? You should t---” cutting himself off with a ghastly noise that could almost be considered a gasp (though it sounded much more like the expulsion of a bellows mixed with the breath of a man who’d been unexpectedly and fatally cut), Elijah froze, stock still as he realized how close he’d been to forcing Viv to speak, that he’d been ready to command him without nary a second thought. Crossing himself, Elijah tried to speak once more, but normally, this time, without any supernatural compulsion: “Tell me everything. That you know. Or you've heard. If you want to. If you're comfortable. So I can keep myself away from them. And be safe."


	6. Reclamation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The playa is going to do his best to leave the Saints and reclaim his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: if you're bothered by head trauma/gore, skip over the paragraph that starts "He tripped on someone at the docks".
> 
> This chapter references the "Reclamation" mission in the first Saints Row game.
> 
> Special thanks to Editor-In-Boyfriend for helping me spot all the times I wrote "of the of the" and detangling my sentences.

Sweaty and sick from last night's frustrations, Viv rolled over---as much as he could in the backseat of his car. Light beat down on him harshly, pummeling him into the afternoon. Hungry and disgusted at his current state, Viv sat up and rubbed his face, trying to massage away the headache that had kicked in the moment his eyes opened.

The headache was a deeply rooted thing. It was made up of alcohol—the hangover from last night---and the sunlight digging into his unprotected face. Squinting, eyes stinging and tearing up, Viv fumbled forward for his sunglasses, which he'd left between the two front seats of his Wasabi Go.

_ "I want to be more like you--" _

That memory of last night—the recollection of Elijah's words filtered in sharply through his headache, like a nail being pushed through cotton. A sigh scraped out from his throat as Viv moved to sit directly behind the driver's seat and leaned his head against the back, his only shelter from the sun.

_ "I want to be kind and gentle to the world. I think that's a good thing to be." _

__ Right. Time to change plans. Get a real job, not run with the Saints anymore, forget the bloody Vice Kings—just forget it all---move on and reclaim his life. Become the person Elijah thought he was.

Of course, getting a real job would be difficult. Considering his stained reputation.

Not that the thing about the truck was known to anyone aside from the Saints---nor did any of his social circles know about his recent involvement in a gang. Rather, he'd done something he probably shouldn't have some months ago, in college---and some fuckhead had gone out of his way to make sure the whole island new about it.

Viv didn't waste time thinking back on that, or regretting. He knew he was lucky he hadn't been arrested, but word had spread quick about what he'd done---anyone who'd heard the name Viv Melkor wouldn't hire him.

At the moment, he  _ had _ to take another shower before he could even try applying anywhere, as demonstrated by the fact that he was now presently unpeeling his sweaty self from the back of the driver's seat.

As much as he'd like to drop by the Heron for a hot shower right now, he wouldn't go near it at this hour—Elijah would be doing...whatever it is he does during the day, working or sleeping---and even if he weren't, he'd be suspicious of Viv rolling up in the same clothes he'd worn to visit him last night, looking like shit, popping into the hotel room specifically to get clean...

_ "Vivian, why are you showering here again? Vivian, why haven't you washed your clothes, Vivian? You smell like your car, Vivian, did you not go home? Do you  _ have  _ a home? Oh dear, Vivian..." _

__ Shower or no, he still wanted to hear his now-totally-and-officially-and-explicitly boyfriend's voice. Leaning against the driver's seat again, bent over his phone, Viv called The Boyfriend..

"Hello!

"...Vivian?"

And couldn't  _ fucking _ say anything.

"Hello? Do you need something? Are you alright?

"...Why did you call if you can't speak? Is someone there who can talk for you?"

Viv shook his head and smiled, though Elijah couldn't see it of course. Even without being able to reply, just hearing Elijah right now was sort of...inspiring, somehow. Things would work out.

"I don't think you can butt-dial me on a flip-phone...Did you call just to hear me speak?"

_ Yeah, _ Viv thought.

"Well." It was one word. Just  _ one _ word. But it was packed full of arrogance, inflated ego, smugness...Elijah was _ preening.  _ "That's flattering. What should I say? Should I talk about my day? I'm organizing Doucelin's paperwork today, and filling in the blanks that require my penmanship..."

Viv would have happily listened to Elijah discuss every detail of his day, but the man had trailed off almost as soon as he'd started. After a long pause, in which Viv wondered if they'd been disconnected and started to take the cell away from his ear, Elijah spoke again:

"Do you really want to live with me?"

Of course he did. Even if Elijah didn't want to be his boyfriend, having him as a roommate would be a blast. But he couldn't say that. He would have said it---had he only his voice---or signed it, if they were having this conversation in person---but as it was, the words wouldn't come. Releasing an abrasive squeak of frustration, Viv pulled at his face with his free hand.

"I mean, it's terrible to ask now, isn't it? To ask that? Now? When you can't talk back? But I just thought of it after you left. I was so concerned about you last night, and excited about everything...everything you said---and I---I...sort of forgot some important things. You know? I'm not sure I'd make a good housem---m---m--- _ a good person to share a house with. _ That's all. Or an apartment. Or a dwelling in the sewers. I just don't know. I'm still learning how to be nice and kind and I haven't quite got that down in relation into furniture*, you understand? Oh...of course you don't. You're a hu--- _ you're normal. _ "

Between Viv's feet was the unholstered Vice 9.  _ I'm not normal. _

Last night, he'd left the gun there on the floor, too upset to throw it away entirely but despising it every time his hand bumped into it in the glove compartment---the damn thing would start to fall out, or his hand would run into while he was reaching for something else. And every time he saw it, every time he touched it, he'd get  _ scared  _ and completely overwhelmed with dread. Last night, he'd finally made the decision to get the gun out of the way and dropped it to the floor behind his seat, too conflicted to discard it entirely. He'd already spent so much money on it, after all, and Stilwater wasn't safe anymore. What if he  _ needed  _ it later?

"And, well, there's the—the---the--- _ illness. _ And sometimes it makes me unbearable and d-danger---uncomfortable to be around. I don't want to scare you."

_ I don't want to scare you, either, _ Viv thought, grabbing the blanket he'd kicked off earlier and draping it over the handgun, as though to hide it..

__ "And—I should just tell you. About...about me. About the...sickness. Explain it all in detail. So you can decide for sure. But it's not good to have these sorts of conversations over the phone. And---and now I worry, that you know, I'll tell you, and you'll be scared, and you won't let me protect you. And then...then what would happen? Nothing good. So,  _ not _ telling you (so you don't get scared of me) and being on my best behavior at all times seems like the best thing to do right now," Elijah said decisively.

_ No, hang on, _ Viv thought.  _ Wait a minute. Elijah. _

"Yes, that's it, we just will absolutely not talk about my sickness and I won't ever do anything weird or bad and everything will be okay. And when the streets of Stilwater are safe again, when you don't need my protection anymore, _then_ I can tell you all about my...disease. Oh, I'm glad you called. I've been wracking my brain about this since last night."

_ WAIT JUST A FUCKING MINUTE, MATE.  _ This was  _ not _ what he wanted out of this conversation. What he wanted was Elijah's original ramble. He wanted to know everything Elijah had done today, everything he was going to do. He wanted Elijah to talk about the business partner he cared so much about, or to tell a story. Viv wanted Elijah to  _ talk. _

__ "I feel so much better now, Viv, thank you for calling. I'm going to be very busy for a few nights---"

_ ELIJAH. _

__ "---so I'll give you a call when I can meet with you again, or have you over. I uhm...l-l-like--- _ I appreciate  _ your company, Vivian, quiet as it may be. Goodbye for now, Viv."

_ AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ELIJAH WAIT WAIT WAIT _

__ "Wa---" Viv choked. It was too late, anyway. Elijah had hung up instant he'd finished his farewell.

  
  


__ Today's (one-sided and terrible) conversation aside, Viv's post-shower job search took him to the Barrio district—trying to get work anywhere else hadn’t been working for him, what with his reputation getting in the way.

Granted, it could be worse. People didn't think "Oh, look at the scary Saint!" when they saw him _ \--- _ the whole gun-toting thing was new. But some asshole had seemingly spread word everyone on this whole goddamn island that Vivian Melkor was an untrustworthy thief. Hate and mistrust immediately entered the eyes of the people who recognized him. This inescapable, recurring obstacle had been the reason he was homeless in the first place.

Well,  _ no _ . His  _ crime _ had led him to being homeless in the first place.

But people didn't have to go around telling  _ everyone  _ about that _. _

__ _ Bastards. _

__ Trying to read the sign in front of a worn-looking bar, Viv wiped his forehead on his sleeve and squinted against the sun. It didn't look like the place was open just yet, but the whole neighborhood felt quiet right about now. "Now" being that time just before evening---the thin clouds were turning orange, people in the bustlier parts of Stilwater were just now clamoring to leave work, taking their bodies to their cars and clogging the roads.

Unable to see any signs indicating hours, Viv went to try the door, only to have it open before he could reach the knob.

In the doorway to the bar, directly in front of him, were black shirts under red suits and blood red ties. Silver dangled from pockets—shining crosses sparkling from necklaces, bracelets, and earrings of the men and women before him.

  
  


The way Viv would tell it later, he was there for recon. He'd say he'd heard this bar had some sort of little Carnales meet-up going on, and that he'd caught wind of it and went to poke around himself, like a brave and smart and heroic man and a loyal member of the 3rd Street Saints. But it had gone wrong, there had been more Carnales there than he was expecting, just too many people in red, and they'd found him right away, nearly surrounding him, so of course he had to escape with what he learned.

He hadn't learned much of course. It's not like he'd eavesdropped on them. All he knew was that the Carnales met up at this bar in Ezpata---didn't know why, or what they were doing---but according to Viv they were all wearing red and had their crosses on and their guns ready. Oh, and it was so suspicious how the street was completely, dead silent when he'd gone on through.

__ Real impressive when he puts it like that.

What really happened was Viv's skin went near as pale as the paper resume in his hand and he tripped over himself backwards,  _ dropped his resume _ and ran—then realized they would see his name on the paper, they'd be able to find him with it, they'd hunt him and down and torture him for the Saints' secrets and then kill him and _ fuck _ he'd only been Elijah's boyfriend officially for a night and a day, and that didn't count really because most of that had been spent apart---and he turned right around, scrambling practically on hands and knees, snatching up the paper and running harder than he had ever run in his life.

"Yo, man, where are you going?!" someone called behind him. "They're hiring, man, just go in and talk to the manager!"

Tires squealed as Viv pulled out of the parking lot, begging the Go to get up to speed without any problems, cajoling it.

_ Just hold together, just hold together. _

He turned the music up loud, too, the radio was still tuned into Rock FM, his eyes drawn more to the rear-view mirrors to make sure he wasn't being followed than to the road.

"Put up a fight..." the radio encouraged, playing a song from My Awesome Compilation. "I believe in you...

I believe in---"

__ _ No thanks! _ Viv tore his attention from the mirrors to tune into a different station, twisting the knob til he reached Gen X.  _ No fighting for me today, mate. _

"But the captain's asleep at the wheel---

"We're heading straight for the rocks!"

Viv jerked the steering wheel, though he hadn't been in danger of hitting anything in his lane. As quick as he had been earlier to renounce his ties to the Saints, he was desperate to have some shelter from the Carnales, who he still believed were after him (though, actually there were no red cars tailing him, and if he'd turned around to look, the people he'd run into in the bar were still loitering in front of the building).

"I've got the anxiety blocked,

"Nose to the grindstone, both eyes on the cl-ock!"

As angry as the song was, Viv still found comfort of the familiarity of Paint It Black's "Panic"--- one of the fifteen most overplayed songs on this station. But comfort only lasted so long. Could he really bring himself to the church when he'd been planning to quit the Saints?

"I've got both eyes on the cl-ock!"

_ Well, it's not like I told anyone I was gonna quit, _ Viv thought to himself, slowing as he rejoined regular traffic. It would be a swim upriver to get to the church at this hour, but it wouldn't be a long swim---he'd just have to cut through Copperton to get to the Row district.

"It's a matter of trust! They wanna rewrite the history---"

Viv turned down the radio a little, because he was already seeing a problem with his plan. One blue car. Two blue cars. Three. Blue cars weren't anything to worry about in themselves, but this particular shade of blue was often accented by white decals, the vehicles were all sparklingly clean.

_ ROLLERZ? Here??  _ Viv wondered, picking up as much speed as he safely could, convinced they'd spotted him and somehow recognized him and were going to follow him to to a dark alley and like run him over or whatever it was they did to people. The number of blue cars only increased as he approached the Copperton Truckyard, speeding right past a whole (thankfully parked) pack of them just within the neighborhood.

Choking on a scream, Viv thought,  _ I'm going to die, _ but he did not die. Before he knew it, he was safely in his abandoned lot near the church, and brought the car to a gentle stop, letting it idle here for a moment as he got his bearings.

For once, the seclusion here felt dangerous. There was only one way in and out of this lot, and he felt like he was surrounded, like at any moment the Rollerz and the Carnales were going to block his exit and kill him here. But no one showed up, and nothing happened, aside from a lazy breeze sending old trash bags inching across the pavement.

Still shaken, Viv walked to the church quickly, trying to keep from running, to keep from sprinting, to keep from trembling. Just as he got up to the courtyard, he saw Troy and Julius, and ran right up to them to tell them what he'd seen.

"I got a tip that there's a turf war going on right now," Troy told him as he walked towards his own car parked in front of the graveyard. "If we crash their party, we can take all those sons of bitches at once."

Viv nodded, but Troy and Julius kept walking their backs to him. They (thankfully) did not see his fluttering, shaky attempts at explaining the bar, or the Rollerz in the Truckyard. Nor did they see his long string of curses when he realized they'd gone on ahead, that they hadn't paid his sign any attention at all.

And then, Julius stopped, and looked Viv over. Frozen mid-spelling, self-conscious at the scrutiny, Viv put his hands down.

"Come on," Julius called, and Viv followed, trying to sign again, but stopped once more with no one looking at him.

They all hopped in Troy's car, Julius in the front passenger seat, Troy in the driver's seat, and Viv in the back.

"Hope you're strapped, playa, 'cause we're about to go in hard."

Viv wasn't strapped. He double-checked to make sure he had the Vice 9 on him (he'd picked it up from the floor of his car earlier, when he reached the lot near the church, in case he had to come out fighting)---but that was all he had.

"I ain't gonna lie to you," Troy said, glancing at him via the rear-view mirror. "When we go in there, it's gonna get rough...Julius," he said suddenly, after a pause. "You sure it's okay we take this kid instead of Johnny?"

"Troy, you worry to much, the kid'll be fine."

  
  


The kid was not fine.

He killed people today.

He had to. If he didn't they would have shot Troy, or they would have shot Julius. Or they would have—they would have---

"I can't believe Julius left me behind!" It was Bleached Tips--- _ Johnny Gat--- _ complaining to Lin as he went up the stairs, both passing Viv without even looking at him. "If there's murderin' to do,  _ I'm _ the guy to call. Not some asshole they dragged off the street."

Earlier, Viv might have stood up, might have faced him. He liked to believe he would have, anyway. But right now, he couldn't stop looking at the blood on his shoes, on his shirt.

He tripped on someone at the docks, and he could still see her eyes. Her head had been split open in two places—a baseball bat to her face had sent her crashing to the pavement and her skull had just...erupted. Viv had been right there, he'd seen it, and the Saints all stepped over her as they continued to advance into the docks. But she wasn't dead. She'd reached out and grabbed him, and pulled him down, and his chin had slammed into the bloody cement where she lay, and he'd cried like a bitch when she went completely still.

"Playa. Come on." Troy patted his shoulder and Viv tried to remember where he was. Church. Sitting on the stairs. Troy is standing next to him, looking as though he wanted to say something else.  _ You didn't have to do this today. You didn't have to stick around. You should have left when you had the chance. _

__ Troy doesn't speak, though, just taps Viv's shoulder again and continues up the stairs.

Viv couldn't leave now. He wouldn't ever be able to leave---his clothes and his mind were too deeply saturated in other people's blood. The beating he'd received before, upon first arriving at the church, that was nothing. That was meaningless. As he got to his feet now and headed up the stairs, following Troy, Viv understood  _ why  _ Julius brought him to the docks, he understood why he'd been brought to a fight that massive, that chaotic. It was a test. If he couldn't cut it there, he would have been another body on the pavement, forgotten by the crew who'd only known him for a week. Against the Vice Kings, the Carnales, and the Westside Rollerz, Viv had come out alive. His real canonization had taken place today, and he couldn't ever go back to the life he had before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *See  Part 1, Milkshake .


	7. Stardom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playa is dispatched to rescue Aisha's sister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIRTEEN PAGE-CHAPTER! WOOT. Thanks to Editor-In-Boyfriend for also acting as Mechanical Consultant and Pew-pew-pew Correctionist for helping me figure out how guns go boom.

Waiting was the worst thing, and it felt like it was all Viv was doing now. Waiting to see if today would be the day he’s arrested or killed. Or the less frightening (yet still stressful) waiting for Julius to speak, waiting for a call back from a job, from Elijah.

“Listen up, people. I got some serious shit to discuss."

Viv felt like he was stuck in limbo, waiting, waiting, waiting. Elijah never called back about living together, or even about visiting the Heron or meeting someplace to talk. Viv’s phone was silent.

“Yeah, we cleared out the Row. You think for a second that’s going to stop ‘em? Unless we wipe all these muthafuckas out, they’re gonna keep comin’, and they ain’t gonna be happy.”

If it was anyone else, Viv wouldn’t keep waiting. Elijah wasn’t his first boyfriend, and (assuming Viv lived through Third Street’s war) he wouldn’t be his last. If it were anyone else, Viv would have moved on.

“It ain’t gonna be settled until the Carnales, the Rollerz, and the Vice Kings ain’t nothin’ but a memory.”

Viv wanted nothing more than to drive all day, to relax, to unwind a little. But his attempts to do so were in vain.

“Dex, you got the Carnales. Ever since they hooked up with the Colombians, it’s like they own this town—and with drug money rolling in, we can’t compete. Be smart about how you move against ‘em. The Lopez family been runnin’ that gang for thirty years. There’s a reason they still around.”

“Got it.”

“Troy, you’re dealing with the Vice Kings.”

Every blue, red, or yellow car made all his hair stand on end. Whenever he came to a stoplight, his stomach would start climbing into his throat and his heart would stop while his eyes registered each and every vehicle around him.

“Not a chance...” Troy grumbled around a cigarette, tense, like he was cornered.

Viv knew this anxiety wasn’t good, wasn’t healthy.

Julius’ looked like he might step away from the stage to beat Troy himself. “Fuck you say?” Nervous, Viv averted his eyes from both of them, focusing instead on the dusty decorations on the wall, the crumbling statue behind Julius. He didn’t want to be present. He didn’t want to be here. Viv returned to his earlier train of thought.

When driving earlier, he learned that if he forced himself  _ not _ to look, he would become convinced that his neighbor in the next lane was leveling a rifle at his window and  _ panic. _ This overwhelming terror drove him to run through two stop lights today, and a third when he heard sirens in the next street over and was convinced he was going to prison, that he’d be pulled over for running a red light and the police would recognize him as a killer, as a gang member, as a thief.

_ “Anyone but them,”  _ Troy said firmly, the stubby cigarette nearly rolling out of his mouth as he spoke.

“You scared of going against Benjamin King?” Julius sounded...more sympathetic that time, and he backed off as Troy looked at the wall.

Ironically, the only place Viv found the only place he felt safe was this church. No red, blue, or yellow. No police. So, he kept coming back, planted his ass firmly in a pew, phone in hand, waiting, waiting, waiting.

“Man, fuck that!” Johnny called out, pushing through the small crowd to be at the front. “I’ll take King out.”

Julius’ attention flicked to Interrupting Bleached Tips. “Johnny. It’s not that simple.”

There are lots of other people waiting, too. Red-faced kids, who swear they’re twenty-one, drinking beer out in the graveyard. They smoke out there, too, and with nothing better to do, Viv joins them. None of them know enough ASL to hold a conversation, but the substance abuse makes them all chatty, and eventually Viv staggeringly pantomimes, plays charades in order to socialize with strangers.

“Bullets still kill muthafucka’s, right? Doesn’t get much simpler than that.”

“Keep an eye on ya boy,” Julius says to Dex. Dex, in turn, looks at Johnny, willing him to be quiet.

Troy  _ hates  _ it. Not the pantomiming, not the charades—but the fact that they’re all out here drinking. He gripes at them, tries to encourage the kids to get back to school during the day and get home at night, occasionally reinforced by Julius snapping at them to get their shit together.

Viv likes the attention though, or at least---he likes making rude gestures at Bradshaw when Julius isn’t looking, and likes teasing him.

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter, Julius!”

“Keep an eye on ya boy.”

They’re relatively unbothered, but it gets boring hanging out with people who try to manipulate him into buying more drinks for them, so eventually, so Viv returns to the pew.

“Who’s got the Rollerz?” Dex asks, bringing the conversation back to its original course.

_ “I  _ do.”

Steaming, Johnny crosses his arms.  _ “Lin?  _ The fuck you wearin’ blue for?”

Today, Viv is high, but not high enough, because people are surprisingly stingy with their weed, especially when they find out you’re not going to do another Brown Baggers run for them today.

“I asked Lin to hook up with the Rollerz,” Julius explains. “We don’t know about these fuckas, so I wanted one of us on the inside.”

“I didn’t think the Rollerz pimped hos!” another man near the front jeers, and drops unconscious to the floor from Lin’s swiftly delivered punch.

“Any other comments?”

“Yeah. When you punch, don’t throw your shoulder so much.”

“Shut up, Johnny.”

“Hey, I’m just sayin’.”

Julius shakes his head, rolling his eyes at them before dismissing the gathering of Saints. “Once we’re done here, go talk to one of these guys. They’ll have something for you to do. It’s our time now. Let’s get this shit started.”

Viv doesn’t move from his pew, but now lays there instead of sitting. His head is fuzzy enough to make the discomfort of lying on his back on a pew negligible, and the noise of people coming and going—shouting, laughing, cheering, crying, barking—it all blends together into incoherence and fades into the back of his mind.

  
  


“Shit. You’re still here. Don’t you have anything to do?”

_ Dex, _ Viv recognizes the voice, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“Get up, and go talk to Johnny. We can get you started on the Vice Kings.”

Viv’s legs move before his brain does, thankfully, because his brain is still trying to convince the rest of him that Dex is talking to someone else and that the pew is actually super comfy and a great place to sleep.

Upon standing, Viv looks around for Bleached Tips, and someone points the way, leading Viv to a large, dark room in the church currently being used for storage. Parts of a pipe organ are propped up in a corner, and cobweb-covered...tall...curvy...candle-holder things...are arranged by a stack of unmarked boxes. Debris and construction material lies in the darkest shadows of the room, a balled up tarp resting on top of a pile of lumber.

The rear of the place, however, is clean and well-lit. A large table sits in the middle of it, with Bleached Tips— _ Johnny— _ seated in an office chair, across from an empty wooden chair. On the wall behind him is a wall plastered with very inviting posters of Aisha. Lots of posters. And lots of guns, Viv notes. The two walls on either side of him hold shotguns and...ah...big guns that aren’t shotguns. A baseball bat with faded stains in the wood leans against the wall, and Viv tries not to flinch at the sight of it.

Johnny doesn’t even say hello, just tells Viv to take the seat across from him at the table, then looks him over with mild disdain—though there’s a spark of something in Johnny’s perusal that makes Viv sit up a little straighter.

“You know...you don’t really look like much.”  _ Ah, fuck this guy. _ Viv slouches a bit and crosses his arms. “Then again, I don’t look like I have an eight inch cock, so I guess we’re both full of surprises.”

_ YEAH,  _ fuck _ this guy. _ Now at attention, Viv turns over the conversation in his mind.  _ Is he flirting? FUCK, he’s gotta be. I’m bored as hell, let’s do this shit. _

__ Hoping his expression is a little more controlled than his brain, Viv looks over Johnny a little more carefully in response.

There’s a lot Viv doesn’t like about Johnny. For starters, the bleached-tipped hair. I mean, come on, what is this, the nineties?

Yup, no, that’s pretty much it.

The things Viv liked about Gat, though, were the tinted frames he wore, even indoors, like Viv, and the jewelry, too, was fascinating. Viv couldn’t recall a day where the man wasn’t bedecked in gold earrings, necklaces, and bracelets that  killed his fucking sensitive-ass eyes sparkled when they caught the light, though today some of that is hidden by a purple jacket. Also hidden by his clothes are tattoos, winding things that loop on both sides of his neck and dive under his shirt. Viv tries to picture what the whole tat might look like, but gets a bit lost on the way imagining the muscle Johnny’s baggy clothes might also be obscuring.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Johnny’s handsome, aside from the hair. And the apparent Aisha-obsession. And gun-fetish.

But, whatever. Viv has a saying: “You don’t really know a guy until he’s taken all his clothes off and put his dick in your hands.” He did not sign this out for Johnny to see. _ However,  _ Viv is ready to sign a much simpler statement that would rid the air of any confusion regarding who is and isn’t flirting (“I’m down to F-U-C-K”) but Dex enters the room right then, moving to stand next to Gat. Disappointed, Viv puts his hands down.

“You get him up to speed on the Vice Kings?” Dex asks.

“No. Ain’t this the guy that didn’t know how to clean a gun?”

“It’s also the guy who ran over three VK’s outside of Friendly Fire,” Dex retorts, arching his eyebrows and adjusting his cap.

“Pft. Anyone can get in a car and drive---”

“And Troy says he saved Julius’ ass at the docks. Took out two Rollerz before the boss even noticed them. Perfect aim.”

It was news to Viv, but whatever.

“Yeah, whatever. I coulda done that.”

Turning his attention directly to Viv, Dex furrowed his brow. “Why’d you fuck around when you were being canonized? Seein’ you fight like that woulda been a helluva lot more impressive than seeing you bawl your eyes out in the dirt like a baby.”

_ I didn’t cry, shithead! _ Viv glared.

“Yo, cool it. Maybe he wanted to get his ass kicked, maybe he likes it,” Gat leans on the table with a lazy smirk. “You really oughta keep that shit in the bedroom, playa---”

Shoving the table into Johnny’s chest, Viv is satisfied by the surprised grunt the man makes, but Gat just grins and shoves the table back with more force. Viv is prepared for retaliation, however, and the table’s edge doesn’t reach his body. For a moment, it’s a game of tug-of-war, but backwards, each of them pushing the table into the other, refusing to give any ground until Dex puts his weight on the far end, between them, pinning the table in place.

“You don’t need a babysitter, huh?” he says to Johnny, eyebrows raised. Caught-off-guard, Johnny looks like a kid who was caught carving his name into his desk, unable to come up with an excuse or a retort for his behavior.

Viv’s mouth ticked upward and he raised his chin in a silent, smug expression of  _ “neener-neener,”  _ that, despite being soundless, still caught Dex’s attention.

“You’re both children.”

Viv’s about to tell him to start charging Julius by the hour, get some money out of this babysitting gig, or “ _ Hell, start paying  _ me _ a salary and I’ll be on my best behavior,” _ but Gat speaks first, and successfully, as he hasn’t been kicked in the goddamn throat recently. “I’m your favorite, though, right?” he jokes, and Dex looks at him with absolute disdain.

“You ever hear the line,  _ ‘kids should be seen, and not heard’?” _

Flattered, Viv cups his hands over his chest and leans forward in his chair, batting his eyelashes underneath his sunglasses.

“Shut up,” Dex tells him, exasperated. Viv covers his mouth, feigning shock and insult. “Johnny, just get this mime here up to speed already.”

“Alright,” Johnny sits up in his seat a little more, leaning forward, “accidentally” pushing the table towards Viv a little bit with the movement. Viv pushes it back more. Dex’s expression shifts from withering to serial-killer, inspiring a (most likely temporary) truce. “The Vice Kings are named after one guy:  _ Benjamin King. _ That shit don’t happen unless you’re a professional or a bad ass---and in King’s case, he’s both.” At that very moment, Johnny’s phone rings. “Hold up. I gotta take this--- _ Aiiiiiisha, _ what a pleasant fucking surprise.” Dex steps away from the table, and Viv glances at the posters neatly taped to the wall behind Johnny, all of which display Aisha in varying amounts of dress (the average amount of clothes per poster being Very Little) and most are autographed with her name. Feeling uncomfortable letting his eyes linger there (and a little jealous of the signed posters), Viv peruses the guns on the wall, one of which is a Krukov with Aisha’s signature in shimmery metallic purple Sharpie.

Viv  _ knows _ Aisha of course. Well, knows  _ of _ her---he’s never personally met her. He has her music---everyone in Stilwater does---and her  _ Avarice  _ album is his particular favorite, mostly because he found the tracks there more relatable than her content in  _ The Other Six.  _ It wasn't that  _ The Other Six  _ was bad, it was just that he found it personally hard to relate to tracks like "Don't Fuck Me Like I'm Your Wife" and "Leave That Ho".

Back to the matter before him---posters and gun (all signed) and a phone call with a person of the same name. There is absolutely no way this random banger with ugly hair  _ knows _ a celebrity like Aisha. eight-inch dick or not. He’s probably just got a weird kink or obsession or something really crazy---he’s probably calling some chick “Aisha” when her name is really “Shirley” or something. Maybe the girl on the other end of the line is into it, but Viv’s suddenly glad he didn’t get a chance to sign “Down to to fuck” earlier.

“Whoa, whoa,  _ whoa,  _ slow down---!” Viv can almost hear “Aisha” from clear across the table, and Johnny holds the phone away from his ear, wincing. “Okay, okay, that’s not  _ slower, _ that’s louder,” he says. Worry has crept into his face and it’s obvious he’s struggling to keep his voice level. Viv strains to hear himself, but it’s pretty difficult to eavesdrop on a phone call across a table, even with “Aisha’s” yelling.  _ “Shit---!” _ Johnny lunges then, surprising Viv as he suddenly gets out of his chair. “Where’s she headed? Don’t worry, I got this.”

Dex has reappeared at the table, just as Johnny hangs up. “What’s up?”

“Some motherfucker’s grabbed Aisha’s sister, right off the street,” he sounds more angry about than distressed. Viv waits, unsure of whether or not he should leave.

Empathetic, Dex looks like he’s searching for the right words for a moment, then gives up. “Shit, man. That’s the sixth girl this month. We know who’s doing this?”

Tense, as though he were about to go on a murder spree starting right now, Johnny nods once. “Yeah...The Vice Kings.”

“No way, man—kidnapping ain’t King’s style.”

“Maybe that slut Tanya is going behind King’s back! Don’t know, don’t fucking care. Aisha said they were driving a yellow sedan---” his head snaps to Viv then, addressing him specifically. “Tail those bitches back to wherever they are and go get those girls back.” He jabs a finger onto the table to punctuate his words, and Viv starts to scramble out of the room---then realizes he doesn’t know  _ where  _ to start looking and turns right back around, sheepish, asking for directions.

  
  


The rescue itself had been...surprisingly easy. He spent the first ten minutes or so stealing a Shogun from the Brown Baggers’ parking lot (the idea of cramming people into his smelly clunker made him so embarrassed and anxious he felt sick) and catching up to and tailing a polished yellow Capshaw, very calmly and without panicking about the fact that he’d  _ just stolen a car out of a parking lot in bright daylight  _ and without accelerating too much or too little or hyperventilating or doing  _ anything  _ like that. At the warehouse Viv had followed the Capshaw to, he spent the next few minutes remaining absolutely still and calm and resolute as he plotted how to rescue the kidnapped girl.

Ultimately, Viv sneaked into the warehouse carefully---and immediately bumped into a Vice King who was on his way out of the same door Viv was entering. Viv had squeaked, emptied a magazine into the man’s chest, ran back outside when he heard shouts and footsteps coming his way, then hid in the alleyway where he parked his car and struggled to reload. When he’d succeeded, he peered round the corner and---seeing as the other Vice Kings were searching the street for him and not this alley, Viv snuck back inside.

But...euh. The girls were being kept behind a locked door.

Viv would have told them to back away, but couldn’t raise his voice enough to get the message out. Instead, he just charged at the metal door, then backed off and tried not to cry when his bony shoulder met the metal.

“The guy with the key went to Tee'N'Ay!” a muted voice from the other side of the door told him.

_ I have a better key, _ Viv realized as soon as the spots of pain stopped clouding his vision, and he backed up several feet and fired his Vice 9 once at the padlock. Screams sounded from the other side of the door, though Viv could see that the bullet hadn’t gone very far at all, just embedded in the body of the lock. Tiny fragments of metal had splintered away from the bullet’s entry point, but otherwise he’d done no harm. Squinting, he took aim at the hasp,  _ missed _ and flinched as the bullet hit the door--- _ and went through,  _ much to the distress of the women on the other side of it---then got closer, putting the gun right up to the hasp.

_ This is the most important thing I’m going to teach you today,” Troy said for the seven-millionth time that afternoon. “The shit you see in movies and comics? None of that works. None of that is real.” _

__ _ “Cars?!” Viv signed, shocked. “Clouds?! Buildings?! None of it’s real?!” _

__ _ Troy nearly bit through his cigarette as he scowled. “I’m being serious. If you’re not careful, you could lose a hand. This thing ain’t a fuckin’ toy, it ain’t a magic wand, and it ain’t a fuckin’ sonic screwdriver. It shoots garbage and people, a’ight, but it ain’t good for much else.” _

__ The shouts of the Vice Kings returning broke Viv out of his memory, but he remained hesitant at the lock, contemplating why such a memory would pop-up  _ now _ , when his focus needed to be on getting these women free and nothing else. In his haste, he picked out two key points: “Be careful” and “This padlock will be a piece of garbage once it’s been shot properly.”

Squeezing the trigger, the gun fired and hit it’s mark--- the lock arced through the air, landing with a metallic tinkling sound somewhere behind him. Viv hissed at the pain in his hand though and grimaced at the Vice 9, unsure if the metal shards now soaking in rivulets of his blood came from the gun or the target. He didn’t have time to figure it out, though. The VK’s were just outside the door, the silhouette of a man in a baseball cap just in the entryway. Viv fired with one hand---or tried to, anyway, but his Vice 9 was apparently fucking stubborn now---and then kept his head down and charged, taking the Vice King by surprise.

“GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE, NOW!” Viv tried to yell back towards the now-unlocked metal door. The noise that scraped out of him could almost be called a growl, however, and he choked, dripping spittle onto the VK as he tossed his opponent’s guns aside.

“The door’s open, let’s go!”

“Hang on! I gotta get my purse!”

_ “There’s no time!” _

Viv sort of liked wrestling. In normal-people society, in civilization, there aren’t a lot of opportunities to get cheered at for hurting someone. Now, he wasn’t  _ any good  _ at wrestling, so what he was doing now was his rarely seen special-move,  _ The Disqualifier _ \---Viv was pummeling the absolute  _ shit _ out of this guy’s face.

A gun fired overhead and Viv flinched, freezing. Just outside of the doorway he was walloping in front of were three more VK’s.

_ Dammit. _

“Get off him,” one of the VK’s commanded. Viv did so (kneeing the person beneath him as he stood), submissively lowering his head and raising his hands in the air. “Good. You two go check on the girls. I’ll take care of this one outside. Don’t want Tanya gettin’ after me for messin’ up the warehouse again.”

_ This is it.  _ Viv took a deep breath of fresh air as the VK shoved him forward, out towards the parking lot.

__ “You really thought you were some shit, huh? Well, now you’re dead.”

Gunfire erupted in the warehouse---not a pistol this time, but something that fired so rapidly it sounded almost like a booming rattle. Viv took the opportunity to go for his foe’s legs, and did a repeat performance of The Disqualifier, but this time he put a bit of a twist on it, utilizing the pavement in his attack.  _ Oh fuck, oh shit, there’s so much blood--- _

_ “Why  _ did you have an  _ SMG  _ in your  _ purse?!” _

“‘Cause it’s Stilwater! Why don’t you have an SMG in  _ your  _ purse?!”

“I don’t  _ have _ a purse---”

“Mine’s too small.”

“ _ Why  _ didn’t you bust that thing out earlier? We could have avoided this whole mess.”

“I couldn’t find it right away! This thing has so many pockets, and I couldn’t remember which one it was in…”

_ That's...it’s over, right? _ Viv glanced over his shoulder at the three women---no,  _ girls--- _ emerging from the warehouse behind him. Two followed the one with the gun, which was now pointed at him. These were all...kids. He suspected the oldest one  _ might  _ be eighteen, but Christ--- _ these were all  _ kids.

“You---Johnny sent you, right? Where’s your car? We need to get out of here.”

“So...you’re _ the  _ Aisha’s sister?” he wants to ask, even though he recognized her right away (what with her bright purple T-shirt with Aisha’s face on it, and the curvy text that read _ “I love Aisha” _ ). Currently, the Shogun they’re all packed in is traveling at 70 on a 35 MPH street, having climbed up to the speed after treating a Vice King like a speed-bump and attracting the attention of several other VK’s in the area. It turns out the sounds of gunfire and unfamiliar cars starting could attract a lot of attention in this neighborhood.

Trying very very very hard not to panic, Viv let his mind stick to things he would like to talk about instead of the high possibility the VK’s will catch up and murder him, and thus far, he’s doing much better than the girls in the backseats, who scream and curse at him over every sharp turn but cry and swear they’ll kill him if he slows down enough that a yellow car comes into view behind them.

“Take the next left!” Aisha’s sister was taking charge, and is probably the only reason the Shogun hasn’t sped directly into a wall or simply come to a stop. Her directions to...wherever she was directing him....was keeping Viv’s flight or freeze instincts from battering his brain to a pulp.

“What’s it like havin’ a talented celebrity as a sister?” Viv wants to press, wants to not think about anything _ deadly,  _ but he keeps his stinging bloody hands on the wheel and his ears open as more complex directions are given. He’s positive they’re still being followed, but he hasn’t seen a yellow car since they sped past that police cars by the Brown Baggers, and he’s also well aware that he was positive every gang in the city was coming for him while he was buying groceries this morning. “Do you think Aisha’ll give me an autograph for rescuing you?” he tries to ask, verbally, instead of acknowledging _ why _ there were police cars at the Brown Baggers and instead of thinking about the eruption of sirens and gunshots and vehicles crashing together they had left behind. All he gets out is a cough and an awful wheeze as he tries to recover from the pain that created, and the girls in the back cling to each other and weep as though he just threatened to drive off a cliff. “You all get this is a rescue, right?” he wants to ask, but he doesn’t try to speak anymore, just keeps following Aisha’s sister’s directions until they pull into to Forgive and Forget Troy had showed him some days ago.

“Anything can be forgiven if the price is right,” a voice crackles from an intercom, next to a chart of “The Cost of Repentance”.

“Sh—t,” Viv chokes. The cheapest package, according to the sign on the wall, is one-hundred dollars. Wincing at the sound of the nearby sirens, Viv cracks open the console between him and Aisha’s sister, ready to dig underneath napkins and CD cases to get to the stash of money he’d been saving for car repairs. Except, the money isn’t there. Because the money is in his old Go, and not this stolen Shogun. Suddenly, a man...woman... _ person _ in a suit materializes at his window and taps the glass slowly, smiling widely, holding open their other hand for the money.

Viv’s hands go to his pockets, a desperation having formed inside him driving him to pull out his wallet, change, anything he could get his fingers on.

“Oh, God, you don’t have enough money,” one of the girls in back laments, but then there is a ruffle of fabric as she digs in the purses they’d reclaimed and Aisha’s sister pulls out her own wallet and slaps several tens on the console before pulling at the car visors, the console, even reaching around underneath her seat to find any hidden cash.

A badge on the suit hovering outside of Viv’s window depicts Forgive and Forget’s mascots, the angel and demon side-by-side, cut through the middle. This person must be an employee, but something about the stretching smile makes Viv’s heart beat even quicker than it had been when he was rushing the girls out to the Shogun, or during the following car chase. His skin, muscles, bone, and blood all feel frozen solid, and he’s hyper-aware of every drop of sweat on his body, but his eyes are fixated on the smile, waning gradually, second by second. A droplet of sweat rolls and falls from Viv’s temple and that’s just nearly enough to move him, he nearly slams on the accelerator, he _should_ drive away. But a part of him knows he _can’t_ leave without paying. Something terrible would happen if he tried, he just knew it.

Money is exchanged through the window (about 97 dollars and a handful of change from the four of them and the twenty found stashed under the stereo) all of it stuffed unceremoniously into apparently deep pockets of the suit pants. When the employee straightens, they look over the car with a much more relaxed air and in a smooth voice, declare: “Thanks to Philosotology,  **_all is forgiven.”_ **

Unsettled, Viv waits a moment as the employee strides outside, and wonders how long they’d have to sit here. But, within minutes, all is quiet—the girls in the back, the sirens, the gunshots--- and Viv felt uplifted, he felt safe. The Forgive and Forget employee doesn’t come back.

“...Can we go? This place freaks me out,” Aisha’s sister said, reminding Viv that Philosotology _ is a fucking cult,  _ and  _ fuck, _ what did they just pay for?

_ BUT HOW DID THAT WORK? _ As safe as he felt a second ago, Viv still scans the streets for threats as he returns to the church, but there were no bright yellow cars, no police cars,  _ nothing _ on the way to the Saints’ headquarters. It doesn’t make sense.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Aisha’s sister said, and Viv nods, bewildered. “They all just...left.”

_ And that  _ only _ cost one-hundred dollars, _ Viv agrees, silently.  _ Like. Damn, I didn’t realize it would be that effecti---HOLY SHIT. _

__ _ That’s a fucking  _ car. _ That’s a FUCKING CAR. _

__ Parked in front of the church is a Venom, and it is  _ brand _ new, sleek and exotic, a car from  _ this very year.  _ It’s stunningly plum purple with a gorgeous decal of a golden lung dragon shimmering across the doors, and the tires are decked out with matching golden rims. The roof is down, currently, but no one is sitting in the car—no,  _ there’s  _ Johnny, leaning against the trunk with his arms crossed, shoulders up, jaw set, face grim.

“I LOVE YOUR CAR!” Viv wants to shout, to leap out of his seat, to touch the Venom, caress it, trace the length of the dragon with his fingertips, sweep his hands over the curve of the car and not choke to death in his excitement. As soon as he parks behind the Venom, the girls fall over each other in their haste to get out, and immediately flock to Johnny, who jerks a thumb to Dex and Julius in the courtyard. Everyone leaves. Except for Aisha’s sister.

“Hey,” she says. “Thanks.”

“Autograph,” Viv signs, but she doesn’t notice, because as soon as she’d thanked him, she got out of the car and ran up to Johnny. “AUTOGRAPH from YOUR SISTER.” Viv signs again, bigger and still unnoticed, but other than that he doesn’t move.

A lot fucking happened today.

The adrenaline evaporates, and suddenly he’s remembering how he was sleeping on a pew earlier, when Dex told him to get up, and now, going back there to sleep sounds like a really really good idea. Or maybe he’d go straight to the Go and sleep there in the abandoned parking lot. Hell, he could just sleep here, even, in the front seat of the Shogun.  _ I don’t want to move. I don’t want to do anything. _

“I knew you’d be a’ight,” Johnny says to her, considerably more at-ease than he had been a second ago. “Here, call Eesh, she’s freakin’ the hell out.”

Euh. But this is a  _ really  _ good chance to ask for Aisha’s autograph. Viv’s just got to make sure he’s noticed this time, and ask very clearly for her sister to---

“Playa. Thanks.” Johnny had walked up to the window of the Shogun, resting a hand on the roof of the car. “I’m gonna make sure she gets home---but me, Dex, Troy, and Lin are gonna meet up in Harrowgate later.” He waits expectantly, and Viv signs a question:  _ “Where?” _

__ “Harrowgate. You know, the hood over th---”

“Where are you meeting in H-gate? Are you inviting me someplace or just telling me?”

“Oh, yeah,” Gat’s embarrassed look---and quick recovery---is real fucking cute. “Just meet me in front of the train station tonight.” And then he notices Viv’s hands for the first time.

“Time?” Viv signs.

“How the hell did that happen? Roll your fuckin’ window down---”

It was already down, partly, so they could have this conversation, but Viv presses the button on the door, letting it down all the way, only to have his hands snatched up and turned over.

“Dex! Playa’s hurt!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I worked on this chapter a lot (it actually got broken up into two chapters!) and now I'm done with it. I'm not sure if the chapter itself is finished, but *I'm* done and ready to move on to the next one.  
> A lot of the dialogue came from the transcripts available on the Saints Row wiki for this one. Julius' speech comes from the "Divide and Conquer" cutscene at the end of Reclamation. The conversation regarding Aisha's sister and the Vice Kings are also from the first Vice King mission, "Aisha's Favor".


	8. Silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playa's hands get treated, and he takes a weird test.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Editor in Boyfriend for editing, rereading, editing, and for rereading again while I kept slamming my face into the keyboard to make words come out. This chapter has been thoroughly edited and even after all that I ended up adding/changing parts last night.

_ Now what? _

Viv frowns at the bandages on both hands. He hadn’t realized he’d hurt the fingers on his left as well as his right until Dex went about picking out the splinters on both.

_ What can I do? _

__ The attention had been...weird.  _ Nice, _ even. Dex removed the tiny metal shards while Johnny supervised, wincing at the particularly gnarly bits that were plucked out of Viv’s flesh. Julius even left the girls in the church nave to help Viv clean up.

“The hell did you do to yourself, playa?” the boss frowned at him, turning over Viv’s right hand to look at the cuts that ticked their way up his skin, all the way up to his forearm.

“Don’t answer that,” Dex glared at the twitching hand. “Don’t move your fingers---don’t sign anything. This is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

Viv would have liked a drink first. Or a smoke. But Dex pulled slowly, and a twisted piece of metal with a hole in it--- _ shit _ , _ that was the bit the padlock had been clipped into, to keep the door from opening _ \---menaced Viv from in between the tongs of a set of tweezers, pinched carefully in Dex’s grasp before he set the whole thing down on the desk. The metal piece clunked surprisingly heavy against the wood of Julius’ old desk, though the pain of its removal hadn’t been as bad as what Viv had been expecting. “Don’t move,” Dex reminded him as Julius set about wrapping the oozing wound. “But  _ damn, _ what the hell did you do to yourself? You try to punch through a metal door or something?”

_ Basically. _ Viv nodded, Dex scoffed, and the boss just grimaced, cutting through a roll of gauze with a pair of scissors like a sensible person, and not using the serated fucking knife Johnny had proffered.

“Well, whatever you did,” Julius grumbled thoughtfully as the scissors snipped shut. “Don’t do it again.”

“Real question is, how’s he gonna talk with his hands all---?” Johnny had paused, searching for the word, then settled on  _ “Mummified?” _

“He doesn’t need to talk, just do what he’s told,” Julius began putting the remaining roll of gauze, scissors, and the stubby bottle of antiseptic back into the first aid kit on the desktop. “Ain’t that right, playa?”

“How’s he gonna do  _ anything _ with his hands like this?” Johnny prodded, making crab hands in the air to demonstrate his point, and, exasperated (and maybe even a little amused) Julius shrugged.

“Can’t a muthafucka talk around here without being asked questions all the time?”

“Uhm. Johnny.” They all looked at her---at Aisha’s sister, Viv still didn’t know her name---the reluctant intruder in Julius’ office. “I called Aisha...can we go?”

Gat quit hovering around them like some sort of bejeweled and purple bee, and went to her side, instantly. “Yeah. You call your parents, too?”

“Yeah...they...uhm...maybe...you shouldn’t...”

Johnny kept walking, leading the way out of the office. “I’ll drop you off at Aisha’s. She’ll take you the rest of the way home.”

“Thanks, Johnny.”

Viv watched them until they were out of sight---which wasn’t a very long time as Johnny closed the solid wood door behind them, keeping other curious Saints out of the room---then watched as Dex discarded the bloody bits of metal into a plastic garbage can by the desk, unpeeled his gloves into the same can, and disappeared afterwards out of the office to wash his hands.

Viv stared at his own hands. They were wrapped tight enough that he couldn’t move his fingers even if he wanted to.

The adrenaline had completely worn away by now, and without anyone paying attention to him, Viv was becoming aware of himself, of his own feelings. Stinging hands and tight face, jaw locked, his entire skeleton tense. And in general, he just didn’t feel good. Tired, mostly, but also  _ sick _ . Disgusted at himself, and the city of Stilwater as a whole.

There was a girl running around with a sub-machine gun in her purse. And it wasn’t out of some twisted paranoia or trigger-happy reason---she  _ needed  _ it. Without it, Viv might have died today. And she would have--- _ don’t dwell on it, she’s alright now,  _ Viv chided himself, still thoughtlessly trying to move his fingers.

“Playa. You need a ride home?” Julius asked, and Viv’s head snapped up to attention. He could probably drive like this. Getting in and out of the car would be an issue with his immobile fingers, though. Euh, and unlocking the car, putting the key in the ignition, getting the key back out and relocking the car...Ugh. He did need a ride.

Viv points the way to the Marina district, having Julius park relatively near the Heron, but not directly by it. The last thing Viv wanted was for  _ anyone _ to know where Elijah lived--- _ especially  _ the boss of Third Street.

“This is it?” Julius scowls. “You live around here?”

Shaking his head, Viv has no other way to communicate that he’s just visiting. And in any case, he has zero desire to give Julius (or anyone in purple, red, blue, or yellow) any personal information.

“You need anything else? Need me to call anyone for you?”

Shaking his head again, Viv reaches for the door handle, knowing full well he can’t grasp it but hoping his boss will take the hint and just let him go.

Julius got out and opened the door for him, patting Viv on the shoulder as he exited the Zenith. “Be careful now. Come back to the church when you’re better.”

Viv nods, and tries to give a thumbs up---but Julius misinterprets the gesture.

“No---I ain’t shaking your hand ‘til you can move without dripping blood everywhere.”

_ Euh. _ Bandages are still a little gross and oozy, pink blotches staining the gauze. It’s not like they’re leaking--- _ dripping _ was quite the exaggeration---but this certainly doesn’t look good.

“You need anythin’, call.” A warm feeling spread through Viv as Julius returned to the driver’s side of the car. Always a sucker for any kind of positive attention, Viv relishes this feeling of reassurance, of comfort, of being cared for. Pausing at the open door, Julius leaned on the hood a little to face Viv. “I forget you’re still new. Remember to call  _ especially _ if you decide to see a doctor. If they think you’re one of us, they’ll be fixin’ up your hands while they chain you to the bed.  _ Be careful. _ See ya around, playa.”

More soothed by the warning than daunted, Viv still feels warm---still feels  _ happy  _ and  _ tender.  _ The bright purple Zenith pulled back out into the street, joining the sluggish crawl of busy Marina traffic. The instant acceptance and  _ compassion  _ from Third Street made him almost forget the whole  _ gang  _ thing _. _

Heartfelt moment over, Viv waits for Julius’s car to be down the street and around the corner, completely out of sight, then heads towards the Heron Hotel alone.

He’d picked up and dropped off Elijah here, plenty of times. And they’d spent many nights wandering the area, peering into windows of shops that were mostly closed by the time they got round to them, and lounging in Eli’s hotel room. But despite the familiarity of the place, Viv still felt strange being here, like everyone could tell he didn’t belong. He supposes he shouldn’t feel that way. Even this close to the Heron, he could see all sorts of people coming and going---tourists, students, beach-bums, business suits, dock-workers...He’s just another face.

A face that might be put behind bars if that cop across the street notices him and recognizes the purple shirt for what it is: a “I’m a member of Third Street, I’m a Saint, I love illegal activity,  _ especially _ murder!”

Picking up the pace, Viv keeps his head down and practically dives into the Heron’s front doors...but once inside, he hesitates in the lobby, unsure if he should try to get the hotel clerk’s attention ( _ Christ, what if  _ he  _ sees the shirt and calls the cops?)  _ or just go right up the elevator and knock on the door. It’s still daytime---Elijah might not even  _ be  _ here right now, he might be at work...or whatever it is he does during the day.

“There you are!” an unfamiliar woman greets him loudly (scaring the shit out of him, too) eyeing his extremely, vibrantly, much too-purple shirt. “I see you’ve already joined Third Street---not who  _ we _ would have set you up with, but your strong initiative has been noted.” As she spoke, she scratches at a stack of papers on a clipboard with a fine pen, and hardly looks at Viv. “As has your  _ tardiness _ .”

“What’s this about?” Viv wonders. To communicate this question, he raises his hands in an almost comically exaggerated shrug.

“Oh. You’re injured. Both hands. How’d that happen?”

It took a few gestures at his throat and some small amount of choking to communicate that he can’t speak, and the woman before him glances at her paperwork, flipping through it twice. Deciding he just wants to go up and wait for Elijah, Viv starts to move past her, towards the elevators. “Nothing in the papers mentioning you being _mute._ _Or_ injured. Do you remember who hired you?”

_ Do you remember who  _ hired  _ you? _

Viv stops in his tracks, turns, smiles, and gives a helpless shrug.  _ Job, _ his mind chanted.  _ Job, job, job. EMPLOYMENT. _

__ _ “That’s _ not in the papers either. Good thing for whoever’s responsible for these informational failings, I guess,” she paused scanning another page, near the middle of the stack. “Ordinarily, we’d do a few more tests, but seeing as you’re injured... _ both hands...” _ she mutters, scritching out another note. Desperate, Viv moves forward and strives to move his fingers under his wrappings, to prove he’s not  _ that  _ injured---but she doesn’t look up. “Hm. According to this, you did perform above average in the audition.”

_ Wait. Audition? Just what kind of job is this? _

__ “Your skills---while not considered necessary (or even proficient) \---are  _ promising.  _ You know what?” she drawls, perusing the next page. “If you’re interested, I can hook you up with something to help you heal. I’d make you sign a waiver first, but...eh, fill out the paperwork after. Come along.”

_ ‘Something’ to help me heal? _ Suspicious now, Viv’s reluctant to follow her out of the building---and even more reluctant to get in her car.

“It’s this, or you don’t get paid until you can...you know. Work.”

_ I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, _ Viv thinks.  _ I have rights as a worker. _

__ “I’m offering you  _ help _ and if you continue to hesitate I will take that as a refusal... _ and...make a note of that...” _

__ Sour, Viv throws himself into the seat before she can scribble more marks on his paper.

“Wonderful. Let’s get to work.”

The dingy, squat building she takes him to looks no different from the rest of the dingy, squat buildings in Stilwater---only that this building doesn’t have an angry drunk or a chillingly silent philosotologist harassing people by the front door. A styrofoam cup, knocked on its side, leaks strong-smelling coffee onto the sidewalk, while a lost bit of crumpled tinfoil is sent clicking and clacking into the street, away from Viv’s employer’s swift kick. The front door looks to have been scrubbed clean recently---the same cannot be said for the first floor windows---but mud still cakes the bottom-most hinge, crumbling away as Viv’s employer pulls open the door. 

In contrast, the inside of the building is extraordinarily clean and bright, the overhead lights practically shimmering across the white tile floor and the glass frames displaying an array of certificates and eye-catching office events. In the lobby, two cheery receptionists greet them, take their names (his employer writes his for him), and with a punch of a few buttons on their keyboard,  _ unlock the heavy steel doors  _ that lead into the first floor office.

Despite the odd doors (which clunk heavily back into place behind them and lock with a  _ cha-clunk  _ sound a moment later) the space here looks like an ordinary classroom. The fluorescents in here are just as obtrusive as in the lobby, but here they only reflect off of polished monochrome desks. Aside from a few knick-knacks and some plastic-looking plants set in polished pots, the place is sparsely decorated---and currently sparsely populated. A couple of employees glance up as Viv and his employer pass their desks, but otherwise they are silent and focused on...whatever it is they’re doing on their slick-looking computers. A sign by the elevator they approach announce the purposes of the different floors in the building:

_ THIRD FLOOR: Upper Management Only _

_ SECOND FLOOR: Data Input _

_ FIRST FLOOR: Lobby and Data Registry _

_ BASEMENT 1: Conference and Testing _

_ BASEMENT 2: Upper Management Only Storage _

Viv’s employer presses the button to summon the elevator, which opens and accepts them promptly. The metal box is just as clean as everything else, and smells faintly of deodorizer, perhaps recently cleaned. With another press of a button, the doors close and the elevator descends with a simple  _ “clunk!” _ to floor B1.

The halls down here are dimly lit by exposed and dying bulbs hanging haphazardly from the ceiling, and the flooring of the corridor they travel through alternates between dirty white linoleum, stained cement, and patches of fraying grey-hued carpet. They pass many rooms at a quick pace, laminated paper signs demanding and pleading for quiet in various fonts and sizes at nearly every door, until they finally reach a dark office with a simple round table. Their destination---this room at the end of the hall---is labeled “APTITUDE TESTING 2” and the paper tacked to the door reads in bright red letters: “ SILENCE PLEASE. New hires at work :) ”

Once Viv is seated at the table in a sagging rolling chair, the employer leaves him for a minute, returning with something small in one hand---a vial, duct taped heavily to obscure the contents.

Saying “If you’re  _ really _ good at your job, you get to drink this stuff,” she swirls it around in front of his nose, as though to taunt him with it.

_ Some kind of drug, then? _ More curious than intimidated, Viv remains at attention. He’d tried... _ things _ like this before. Plants and fungi passed around in plastic bags, pills that had changed hands so many times no one knew just what they were passing around, except that it made them feel good. Hell, there were some scary people in chemistry who had whipped together a concoction they called “The All-Nighter”---Viv had chugged that right out of an Erlenmeyer flask without batting a lid, but the fact that his employer was offering him something strange gave him pause. Maybe this was some kind of test?  _ Should I tell her no? Should I walk out? This has to be a test, right? _

“But as it is, you’re  _ new, _ so you just get the bandaid treatment. Now this could interfere with your field, of course, but very weakly and temporarily, so don’t worry.”

_ The hell are you talking about? Just what is this stuff?  _ Before Viv could try to charade-out a question, she’d cut through the bandages on his right hand with a knife barely the length of her thumb.

“Your hands really should have been stitched up,” she uncorks the vial with the same tiny knife she just used on his wrappings. “Good thing you didn’t get them taken care of properly, though. You put this stuff on with the stitches in?” she waggles the vial in the air, above a velvety brown cloth she draped on Viv’s hand. “And the thread will just sort of...melt into your skin. Pretty cool look though, if you’re into that sort of thing.”

_ She’s...she’s crazy!  _ Trying to pull away as pale pink liquid drips out of the vial, his employer pins his hand down, chiding him not to waste it, promising it won’t hurt, disgusted he doesn’t trust her.

And the pink watery stuff hits the cloth in droplets, each drop that touched down over one of his scratches itches and burns and then  _ soothes. _ The liquid feels cool and damp on the cloth---except where it soaks through and touches his wounds, and there it feels warm---no,  _ hot--- _ as though just those parts of his skin were soaking in their own personal hot tub.

“See,” she says proudly, yanking the cloth away like a showhost revealing a car under a tarp. Ugly scars cover Viv’s hands...but they were scars. Not oozing gashes. She cuts away at his other hand while Viv flexes his fingers. “Now, normally, you’d  _ have  _ to drink the stuff in the vial. But I figured out how to use it differently, so you don’t get all the weird side-effects.”

_ Ah, fuck. Side-effects. _

“My field is  _ this. _ I understand how  _ this _ works. I couldn’t explain it to you,” she admitted, somewhat sheepishly as she flipped the cloth over onto Viv’s other hand. “I can’t explain it to anybody. I don’t know anyone who...who understands  _ this.  _ But it’s useful, right? Instant fix.”

Experimentally, Viv clenches and stretches his right hand---the left feels numb as  _ whatever _ that was works into the wounds---and while the scars were sore and achy, his hand doesn’t  _ hurt  _ anymore _. _

__ “Good, right?”

The paperwork is both mind-numbingly dull and...intriguing. The first few pages are legal jargon ensuring he won’t go out and tell anyone about his job or what the company was doing. The next stack consists of complex waivers he stopped reading. And then there was a smaller stack regarding his health, with boxes that asked him to “List all allergies here” and “Describe if and where you have excessive amounts of body hair and teeth”.

The teeth thing actually came up a lot: “How many teeth do you have at this moment? Please count them and list them here.”

These odd questions are regularly interspersed with more normal questions regarding substance abuse ( _ absolutely not, never, perfectly sober all the time _ ), his activity level ( _ athletic _ ) and general well-being ( _ doctor says I’m a superhero, I’m that healthy _ ). And he supposed the questions about sleep-walking and weird dreams weren’t too odd ( _ probably concerned with that if I have to pull an all-nighter here. At whatever this place is, with...whatever I’ll be doing)  _ but the questions asking if he’d changed anything about his body ever felt extremely intrusive ( _ no, I’ve always been like this _ ) and the questions about his sex life also felt a mite to personal ( _ and no, I haven’t felt the need to count my partners’ teeth) _ .

Then there is the ginormous “Personality, Skills, Traits, Attitude, and Aptitude Test”. Viv’s hand is cramping by the time he reaches it, but his employer calls him a “real trooper” and gives him a sandwich full of meat, cheese, and tomatoes (the first full sandwich he’d eaten since the financial rug had been ripped out from under his feet---those grease-soaked slabs of meat from Freckle Bitch’s didn’t count) as well as a bottle of apple juice, so he sticks to it.

“Use the bubbles to answer each question. 1 is very poor or no, and 5 is excellent or yes.

“Are you a team player?”  _ 5\.  _ “How would your family rate your ability to cooperate?”  _ 5\.  _ “How would your past employers rate your ability to work in conjunction with others?”  _ 5\.  _ “How important is your ability to cooperate to your Field?” _...What? That’s like, my profession, right? My Field? Why’s it capitalized like that? _ _ 5. _

__ “How attached are you to your Field?”  _ 5\. Not that I even know what “Field” I’m applying for... _

“How attached to you is your Field?”  _ What the fuck is this? 5. 5 is good, right, it’s askin’ if my Field  _ needs  _ me, it’s gotta be asking if I’m  _ important  _ or  _ necessary _ to my profession or something.  _

“Rank your Field based on how you felt about it when you first recognized it as your Field.”  _ What the hell? How I felt---is it asking how I felt when I knew this would be my profession. 5---just pick super-postive answers for all this shit, right? _

“Rank yourself, based on how your Field felt about you when you first recognized it as your Field.”  _...Uh. 5. _

“Rank yourself on how you felt about you when you first recognized it as your Field.” _5\. Just_ what the fuck is _this?_

__ “The following questions are hypotheticals, but you may see these things happen in the workplace, and it’s important we assess whether you can react appropriately. Please choose only one answer of the multiple choices offered to you.”

“Your coworker spills coffee on material that has no other copies…”  _ Terrible, I would never do that,  _ Viv thinks. He’s never been intimidated by a test before but the wild questions here and there have him feeling surprisingly on edge---the normal ones feel both refreshing and  _ puzzling,  _ as though there was some hidden meaning he was supposed to be digging out. It made him feel... _ defensive.  _ “Rather than attempt to salvage the paper or alert anyone, they throw the material away. As a witness what do you do?”

And snippy.  _ Egads. How awful. B. Alert our superiors. _

__ “Your coworker notices you, and promises the papers are inconsequential. What do you do?”

And tired.  _ Eat shit, anonymous coworker, I’m gettin’ this money. B. Alert our superiors.  _ He had to take a test like this (minus the ones about teeth and “Fields”) for his job at the college Gift Shoppe. In fact, with  _ that  _ test, most of the questions were like this---”What do you do if you see your coworker steal money?” and “What do you do if you catch your coworker eating during work hours?” or “Your coworker forgets to give a member of the chess team a discount, how soon do you report this offense?” The questions were annoying, and pointless, and made everyone who picked up the job watch each other like hawks until the shit-pay set in and they all stopped caring.

“Your coworker decides you are a threat and need to be eliminated. How do you react?”

Blindsided, Viv blinks and rereads the question. And rereads it again. And again.  _ It really does say that, doesn’t it---Euh. B. Alert our superiors. _

__ “You find your coworker eating raw meat in the park after work hours. What do you do?”

_ It’s always nice when the correct answers are easy to pick out, I guess. D. Alert our superiors during normal business hours the following day. _

__ “Your coworker tells you the cafeteria microwave is broken. What do you do?”

_ Oh, thank God, back to normal. B. Alert our superiors. _

“Bergetha has 27 apples. There are 32 people riding the metro on a Sunday. Bergetha’s backpack can only carry 4 laptops, a dozen sodas, a soccer ball, and 16 apples. The weather is humid and it is seventy degrees Farenheit in July and the time is 4 PM. The office closes at 6 PM and Bergetha is three miles away. How many apples will Francis eat if Bergetha leaves now?”

_ Ah, nevermind then, there’s no normal here. Alright Viv. Just keep it together, don’t panic, just take a deep breath, close your eyes for a second, and...reread. You  _ need  _ this job. This is your  _ only  _ way out right now, your only way back to being a civilized person. Just...reread. _

“Bergetha has 27 apples. There are 32 people riding the metro on a Sunday. Bergetha’s backpack can only carry 4 laptops, a dozen sodas, a soccer ball, and 16 apples. The weather is humid and it is seventy degrees Farenheit in July and the time is 4 PM. The office closes at 6 PM and Bergetha is three miles away. How many apples will Francis eat if Bergetha leaves now?”

_ Oh Christ, I figured it out. All these weird questions, the vial, all of it----I’m fucked up. I’m so fucked up. Fuck, what if the vial really was a test? What if I was supposed to say ‘no’ to that weird fuckin’ drug? Or maybe I hit my head on something before I even met this woman and I’m hallucinating everything. Or I’m just fuckin’ crazy now. Oh fuck, oh shit, oh fuck--- _

The question remained the same, no matter how many times Viv closes his eyes, no matter how long he leaves them closed before opening them again and rereading.

There’s no way to get this right.. High, fucked up, or crazy---he has to settle on an answer, and just do the best with what he has.

  1. _Alert our superiors._



After an hour of multiple choice, Viv’s final packet is a slap in the face: pages full of blank lines with the instructions to “Please write what answer choice you selected for each of the previous multiple choice questions, and why you chose those answers.”

_ DAMMIT. FUCK SHIT FUCK--- _

“All done?” Ira asks, taking the wimpily offered stacks of paper. “Good. It’s about time for me to get home.”

The new hire is red-faced and exhausted, but something about his features suggest he is feeling more than just tired.

“Why so glum?” She pressed, not really expecting an answer. “The test is just to see where you’d fit best in our company. You can’t really pass or fail. You  _ have _ the job, no matter what answers you pick.”

The new-hire scratches his head, still worried, and Ira searches for something more reassuring to tell him---he was going to be Corporate’s eye in the Saints after all, the last thing she needs is for him to be anxious about this miniscule part of the job. “You know what? I’ll have the girls upstairs process this tonight. Come back tomorrow at...say...noon? We’ll discuss your results, your schedule, and all that, and then I can give you a tour of our little outpost here.”

With a weak-thumbs up from the new-hire, they went back to the elevator, waiting for it this time.

“Don’t worry about the whole  _ Saints  _ thing too much, either. The police will take care of everything before you even have to do anything.”

New-hire doesn’t look reassured at all. If anything, he looks ill---which is physically impossible, Ira would have noticed before if he were sick. Anxiety, though, is undetectable...and incurable. At least, not with the kind of stuff she’s working with. Maybe she can get New-hire some weed or something later, that’ll help him. The elevator clunks into place, and the doors open before them. He steps in first, looking eager to be away.

New-hire keeps a hurried pace until he’s out the door, not even waving good-bye or signing out properly. Ira sighs, deciding she’d cut him some slack and wouldn’t take a note of his behavior this evening. After signing him out for him--- _ New-hire #2,  _ she wouldn’t learn his name until after his  _ Personality In Succinct Symbiosis Field test  _ went through---she carried out her promise and made sure New-Hire’s test would be processed tonight, then reviewed what little information she did have once more.

Well, “little” isn’t quite the right word. Whoever filled out the paperwork just had...differing opinions on what was important. Judging from the lack of physical description (except for quantity of teeth and hair), and the fact that the  _ Inner Reflections  _ boxes had been filled out (capturing New-Hire’s thoughts without his knowledge), she suspected one of her  _ stranger  _ coworkers been responsible for New-hire’s hiring.

New-hire was certainly something strange himself. Mute, mysteriously injured, nauseatingly anxious yet already a part of a street gang---and he wore sunglasses indoors! Definitely hiding his eyes, which are probably bright red or glowing or something---Ira had seen  _ that _ before.

Still, there’s the matter at hand---an inexcusable amount of blanks in the Hiring Process paperwork. Physical descriptors are a  _ must.  _ If the meeting at the Heron lobby hadn’t been carefully and delicately and perfectly arranged before-hand, Ira might’ve ended up bringing some stranger to their secret deadly (and infuriatingly bureaucratic) world!

Ira was all care though, unlike whoever had filled in the paperwork before her. She added New-Hire’s description, her thoughts on him, how many teeth she estimated he had, and made sure to note in all appropriate areas his involvement with the Saints. She left this work upstairs as well, to be processed---the information inputted into computers and the papers themselves locked in a dark filing cabinet somewhere, never to be seen or read again.

That final realization hit Ira like a truck, and she took the stairs by twos, going right back up to Data Input and startling the people at nearby.

“I made a mistake!” she puffed loudly, calling across the floor from the doorway. Heads appeared over grey cubicle walls and peered at her curiously from around corners. Ira had not really made a mistake---Ira was all care, all the time---she was the best at her job, taking all the right notes, saying all the right words, playing by all the stupid rules until the point where she could  _ bend  _ them. New-hire spent hours here, just like everyone else, completing tests that would only be skimmed over once or twice by Data Input and after all this he’d be paid to check off boxes downstairs, to read the same paperwork over and over and over again for hours each day until he either quit or proved himself enough to check off the different boxes upstairs. No amount of  _ bending  _ would change the company’s stupid system. But with just a few words, she could cast his papers out into a pool that would actually read what he wrote. Of course, he might still end up in Data Registry---but Ira could at least give the New-hire a chance at something more. “This one’s different. Call Upper Management  _ immediately. _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I have hundreds of pages of fanfic I'm editing currently, so like, strap in. Buckle up. Hold onto your hats. Expect some form of Boss/Gat later and a tasteful smattering of OC's. In addition, this work will be crossing over with Vampire: the Masquerade at various points, so like, you can sink your teeth into that down the line. Thanks for reading.


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